Ermine who was tall also, though an inch or two shorter than Madelene, stooped to kiss her. And her kiss seemed to Ella less cold than her elder sister’s.
“I shall like her the best,” she rapidly decided, for she was much given to rapid decisions.
“You have quite taken us by surprise, Ella,” said Ermine, in a tone which told nothing. The truth was that she was on the look-out for some sign or signal from Madelene as to what was the meaning of this sudden invasion and in what spirit it was to be met. For though they were not absolutely free from small differences of opinion in private, the mutual understanding and confidence existing between the sisters were thorough and complete, and even had this not been the case, they would never have allowed any outsider to suspect it.
Madelene caught and rightly interpreted Ermine’s unspoken inquiry.
“Ella has thought it right,” she began in a somewhat constrained tone, “to come home sooner than was arranged, on—on account of annoyances which she has been exposed to at Mrs Robertson’s and—”
”‘Annoyances,’” flashed out Ella, thereby giving Ermine her first glimpse of the fieriness of which Madelene had already in the last quarter of an hour seen a good many sparks, ”‘annoyances,’ do you call them? I think that is a very mild term for unendurable, unbearable insult, and—”
“Ella,” said Madelene quietly, “you have told me quite as much as I want to hear at present. Papa will be home soon and then you can see what he says. In the meantime it seems to me very much better to drop the subject—it would only leave a painful association with the beginning of your life here to do nothing but uselessly discuss disagreeables. The thing is done—you have left your aunt’s and you are now with us. Neither Ermine nor I need to say anything about it and it is probably much better that we should not.”
“Very well,” said Ella, with as near an approach to sullenness in her tone, as such an essentially un-sullen person could be capable of. “I don’t like it, but I don’t want you to think me ill-natured or quarrelsome when I know I am neither, so I’ll give in. But all the same I feel that you blame me and disapprove of me, and I hate to feel that.”
She glanced up with a slight suspicious dewiness in her lovely brown eyes.
“Poor little thing,” murmured Ermine half under her breath, but a glance from Madelene restrained her. “I know how she means, Maddie,” she said aloud, “I hate the feeling of unexpressed blame or disapproval more than the worst scolding spoken out to me.”