“You could have given Mrs Robertson a regular allowance for her, if that had been the only difficulty. But if this Mr what’s his name?”
“Burton,” said Ermine.
“If that Burton fellow is rich he would possibly have disliked any arrangement of that kind,” said Philip.
“He evidently wants to get rid of her,” said Madelene, smiling a little. “Some things in Mrs Robertson’s letters make me imagine that the third Miss St Quentin has a will of her own, and a decided way of showing it. She speaks of ‘dear Ella’s having a high spirit, and that Mr Burton was not accustomed to young people.’”
“And Ella called him ‘old Burton’ in a letter to papa,” added Ermine. “We told papa she must have left out the ‘Mr’, but for my part, I don’t believe she did. I think that expression has made me more inclined to like her than anything else,” said Ermine, calmly.
“Ermine!” said Madelene.
But Philip turned to her with another question.
“Are you sure,” he said, “that Mrs Robertson may not already have explained things to Ella? If so, it would be better to know it.”
“I am sure she can’t have told her what she doesn’t know herself,” said Madelene. “Papa’s losses made no practical difference to her; she has always received anything she wanted for Ella—to do her justice she has never been the least grasping—from us, but in his name just as before. We begged him to let it be so, and it has never come to much.”
“Then do you think she has brought the child up very simply?” asked Philip.