“But there is no question of either, just now,” said Madelene smiling a little. “I did tell Ella openly what I thought, but she did not agree with me, and so I don’t see that there’s the least use in saying more. Do let us get into the shade—and I am sure Ella is longing for some tea.”
“It is all ready,” said Ermine, leading the way to the table under the trees, as she spoke. “I had some fresh made.”
“And Philip?” asked Madelene with the very slightest possible touch of hesitation.
“He is gone,” said Ermine. “He left immediately after you went in.”
“I thought perhaps he would have stayed after all,” she said vaguely.
Ella listened, not without curiosity.
“Who is Philip?” she had it on the end of her tongue to say, but she hesitated. “If they wanted to make me feel at home—one of them,” she said to herself, “they would have begun telling me all about everybody and everything, and if they don’t choose to tell I don’t choose to ask. ‘Philip,’ I remember something about some one of the name in a dreamy way. And just now in the house Madelene spoke of a cousin—‘our cousin,’ I think she said. Well I suppose he is my cousin too, and if so, I can’t but hear about him before long, without asking.”
One question however occurred to her as a perfectly natural and permissible one.
“Is my godmother, Lady Cheynes, at home just now?” she asked abruptly.
Madelene looked a little surprised.