“Maddie won’t commit herself,” said Ermine laughing. “She sets up for a sort of ‘Fine Ear’ in the fairy-story, don’t you know, Philip?”
“No,” said Madelene. “It isn’t that. I only hesitated because what I was going to say seemed so silly. I thought it sounded so like the old Weevilscoombe fly—and what could it be coming here for at this time? The old Miss Lyndens hire it when they come out for their yearly visit, but that is over and past a fortnight ago.”
That it was an arrival of some kind, however, became clear. In another minute the hall bell was heard to ring—it was a bell of ponderous clang, impossible to mistake for any other.
Then the figure of Barnes, the butler—Barnes who never disturbed himself except on occasions of peculiar importance—was seen hastening along the terrace. The three cousins stared at each other.
“What can it be?” said Madelene, growing rather pale. “Can papa have met with an accident?”
The same thought had struck Sir Philip: he did not reply, but looked apprehensively towards Barnes.
“If you please, ma’am,” said that functionary, puffing a little with excitement and quick movement, “if you please, ma’am, it’s—it’s a lady. A young lady, with luggage—from Weevilscoombe, I suppose—anyhow, it’s the Weevilscoombe fly as has brought her—” but though there was plenty of time for Madelene to have here exclaimed “I knew it,” she did not avail herself of Barnes’s pause, for this purpose.
“A young lady;” she repeated; “there must be some mistake. We are not expecting any one. What is her name—she gave it, I suppose?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Barnes, hesitating still more—though he had all the air and bearing of an old servant he had not been more than five or six years in their service—“she did and she said as her name was ‘Miss St Quentin’.”
The three looked at each other again.