“Well then she shouldn’t marry a man who would do so,” said Ermine.
“I quite agree with you,” he replied drily, “but we all know there’s no fool like an old fool.”
“It is hard upon Ella, with whomever the fault lies—that is what I’ve been trying to get to all this time,” said Madelene. “If she had always looked upon this as her home, and felt that we were really her sisters, she would have grown up to understand certain things gradually, which, now when the time comes that she must know them, will fall upon her as a shock.”
“You mean about our money and this place?” asked Ermine.
“Of course—and about papa’s being, though I hate saying it, in reality a poor man.”
“Do you think there is any need for her to know anything about it for some time to come?” asked Philip gently, completely casting aside the bantering tone in which he had hitherto spoken.
Madelene looked up eagerly.
“Oh, do you think so, Philip?” she said. “I am so glad. It is what I have been thinking, but I know papa respects your opinion and it will strengthen what I have said to him.”
“Decidedly,” said Philip. “It seems to me it would be almost—brutal—I am not applying the word to any person, but to the situation, as it were—to meet the poor child, already sore probably at having been turned out of the only home she can really remember, with the announcement that the new one she is coming to is only hers on sufferance, and that her future is, to say the least, an uncertain one.”
“It would not be so for another day if we had more in our power,” said Madelene hotly.