“If you like—if you think it best,” she said, with the first approach to misgiving or shyness she had yet shown.
“Would you like better to see papa alone?” asked Madelene.
Ella instinctively made a little movement towards her.
“Oh no, no, thank you,” she said, looking really, frightened.
“Well then, we will go together,” said Madelene softened, though her manner scarcely showed it.
And in a few minutes Ella found herself again in the library where she had waited for her sister, little more than half-an-hour before.
Wheels crunching the gravel drive were heard almost immediately, then Barnes’s voice and another in the hall.
“In the library, do you say?” this new voice repeated. And in a moment the door was opened quickly.
“Are you here, Madelene? There is nothing wrong, I hope? Barnes met me at the door to tell me you wanted me at once.”
“Yes, papa,” said Miss St Quentin, rising as she spoke. “You didn’t meet Philip, then? No, there is nothing wrong. It is only that—” She half turned to look for Ella. The girl was standing just behind her, and it almost seemed to Madelene as if she had intentionally tried to conceal herself from Colonel St Quentin’s notice at the first moment of his entering the room. And for the second time a softened feeling, half of pity, half almost of tenderness, passed through her towards her young sister. “Ella,” she went on, and Ella came forward. “You see, papa,” Madelene added, “this is why I wanted to see you at once. Ella has arrived—sooner than we expected.” She tried to speak lightly, but Colonel St Quentin knew her too well not to detect her nervousness. He knew, too, that this sudden move on Ella’s part could not but be annoying and disappointing to his elder daughters, who had been making all sorts of plans and arrangements for her joining them at the time already fixed upon.