“I was nineteen,” said Ermine; “you know we were abroad all the year before. I thought it very hard then, but now I’m very glad. It makes me seem a year at least younger than I am,” she added naïvely.
“It’s only staving off, after all, I’m afraid,” said Madelene. “When she is eighteen or even nineteen, and has to come out, and wonders why papa won’t let her have everything the same as us and—”
“Oh, Maddie, don’t fuss so,” said Ermine.
“Twenty things may happen before then to smooth the way.”
“I hope so,” said Miss St Quentin. But her tone was depressed.
“Scold her, Philip, do,” said Ermine. “If she worries herself so about Ella it will make me dislike the child before I see her, and that won’t mend matters.”
“When does she come?” Sir Philip asked.
“Next month,” Madelene replied.
“Do you think she feels it very much—the leaving her aunt, and coming among strangers as it were?” he asked.
“I don’t know. She cannot but be fond of her aunt, but she has said distinctly that she would not wish to go on living with her and her new husband. And of course it is time and more than time for her to come to us if this is ever to be her home. And though Mrs Robertson is marrying a wealthy man, she loses all she had as a widow, and certainly we should not have liked our sister to be dependent on a stranger.”