“I know,” she thought, “I know what it is. I look exactly like that picture of Cinderella in the musée at Nantes that aunt and I went to see last year. I didn’t think I could ever look so pretty,” and she smiled with a little inward satisfaction. But the smile faded, and a look of perplexity replaced it. The sight of the old room, once so familiar, though since so entirely forgotten, was beginning to vaguely awaken memories of her past childhood. And the association of the pretty French picture helped to bring one special scene to her recollection.
“Yes,” she said to herself, “I do remember—Harvey was sitting on this very chair, I do believe, with me on her knee, and there were picture books strewed about. And she told me the story of Cinderella, that was it, and there is a confused remembrance in my mind of thinking I was like her, the third sister, though at that time, of course, I knew nothing of half-sisters or stepmothers. Still, after all, I haven’t a stepmother—Madelene and Ermine had that, but they don’t seem to have suffered from it. I suppose my mother was a gentle, angelic sort of—goose—” Here Ella, to do her justice, felt a little shocked at herself. “I shouldn’t say that exactly. But she must have given in to them in everything—about sending me away after her death no doubt, for she couldn’t have wished me to be expatriated Poor mamma. It would have been better for me, no doubt, if I had had more of her nature, but as I haven’t—”
Then she sighed and glanced round the room again, while her mind reverted to her sisters’ spacious quarters.
“It is very queer,” she thought, “that I should have remembered about Harvey and the picture to-night. It was like a sort of vision of my life and position—only—I fear there is no chance of the prince ever finding his way to me. Madelene and Ermine wouldn’t let him! I wonder why they are not married themselves, for they are very good-looking. But Madelene’s manner is so forbidding, and most likely she wouldn’t allow Ermine to marry before her. Ermine is quite under her thumb. Ah, well—it is rather melancholy to feel so lonely in my own home. I wish I could have found poor old Harvey here again.”
For Ella cherished roseate remembrances of her former nurse, whom, in point of fact, she could only recollect as a name. Harvey had left Mrs Robertson’s service, happily for the child she had the care of, very few months after Ella went to live with her aunt.
Miss St Quentin and Ermine, the former’s protestations of fatigue notwithstanding, had not been able to resist a few minutes’ confidential talk.
“You are not to stay, Ermie, you really mustn’t,” said Madelene. “I am tired—it is not nonsense, and I want to be as bright and fresh as possible to-morrow morning, for I foresee papa is going to be rather—worried—about Ella. And it is so bad for him.”
“It will be very stupid of him if he really takes it that way,” said Ermine. “He will say, of course, that it is for our sakes, whereas the only part of it we really—or, at least, principally—mind is his feeling it painfully. And after all, it’s wrong, really wrong to make a trouble out of it—of having our own sister to live with us, where she should always have been.”
“That’s the whole trouble in the matter,” said Madelene. “If she had always been here it would have been all right and natural.”
“She’s very pretty,” said Ermine, after a moment or two’s silence, “and she has evidently a good deal of character.”