“I wouldn’t be ordered about like that, at her age,” thought the youngest sister.
Colonel St Quentin kissed his elder daughters in silence, but just as Madelene, who was the last to leave the room, got to the door, she heard him sigh, and despite her resolution of not talking things over any more that night, she could not resist turning back for a moment.
“What is it, papa?” she said gently.
“Oh, nothing much, my dear,” he replied. “I am only afraid we are going to have trouble with that child. I don’t understand her. You and Ermine never were like that—yet she is lovable too if she would allow herself to be so.”
“Yes—I think so too, but, papa, don’t think so much about her. She will fall into her place.”
“She should never have been out of it. It is that I am blaming myself for,” he replied.
Madelene hurried up stairs after her sisters. They were just at the door of Ella’s room—“the nursery”—when she overtook them. Ermine opened it—the candles were already lighted and Stevens was arranging some of Ella’s belongings. It looked a pleasant and cosy room now, even the slightly faded air of the furniture rather added to its comfort. No one, save a most perversely prejudiced person could have found any reason to complain of such quarters. But a very perversely prejudiced person Ella was, it is to be feared, fast becoming.
She sat down in the capacious, old-fashioned armchair, covered with the same faded chintz as that of the window-curtains, and looked about her.
“Well,” she ejaculated, “I wonder what Aunt Phillis would say, if she saw me here. Here in the old nursery! After eleven years’ exile from my rightful home, this is the best they can give me.”
Her glance fell on the toilet-glass—it was a large, handsome one, which Madelene had directed the housemaids to put in place of the smaller one really belonging to the room. The candles were lighted, two on the mantelpiece not far from where Ella was sitting, and two on the dressing-table, and the girl’s face and surroundings were clearly reflected. She had loosened her hair and put on a little white jacket—and as she caught sight of herself, her face in the glass, looking even paler than in reality, her eyes sad and wistful, she wondered what her own reflection reminded her of. Suddenly she started—