Philip laughed.
“No, truly,” he said. “All things considered it is much better for me to leave you. And it’s quite true about my curiosity. I’m awfully curious both to hear about it all and to see this little personage who has descended among us in this thunder-and-lightning, bomb-shell sort of way. By Jove—” and he stopped short, while a different expression came into his face—“what a nuisance it is to think that all our jolly times together are over! I was grumbling at it prospectively this morning—to think that it has already come to pass.”
He sighed. Ermine sighed too.
“Yes,” she said, “it is horrid. For I know—as positively as if I could hear what is at this moment passing in the library—that the child has come to stay.”
“Oh Lord, yes,” Philip exclaimed, “not a doubt of it.”
“I only wish she were a child,” pursued Ermine. “It might be more of a bother in some ways, but in others—seventeen’s an awful sort of age—most girls then are really children and full of fancying themselves grown-up, and standing on their dignity, and all the rest of it, and yet not really grown-up enough to be proper companions to—”
“Two full-fledged old maids like you and Maddie,” put in Philip.
“Exactly,” said Ermine.
“Well, good-bye again,” he said, lifting his hat as he turned away in the direction of the stables.
Miss St Quentin made her way slowly to the house. She looked outwardly calm, indeed to look anything else had scarcely ever in her life occurred to Madelene, but inwardly she was greatly perturbed. To begin with, she was as I have said, a sufferer from intense shyness; shyness of that kind most painful and difficult to contend with, better perhaps defined as moral timidity, which shrinks with almost morbid horror from giving or witnessing pain or discomfort, which, but for the constraining and restraining force of a strong sense of duty, would any day gladly endure personal suffering or neglect, or allow wrong-doing to go unrebuked, rather than attempt the slightest remonstrance. Madelene could enter a roomful of strangers without a touch of nervousness, but the thought of reproving a servant would keep her awake for nights! and that something in the action of her young half-sister was about to call for rebuke or disapproval she felt instinctively certain. Then there were other reasons for her feeling far from able to meet Ella with the hearty welcome she would have wished; housekeeper’s considerations were on her mind!