“Ella,” said Madelene, “she was here an instant ago—can she have run off?”
“Shy?” asked Lady Cheynes. Madelene smiled.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Ah, there you are,” she went on, as Ella appeared from the other side of a screen, where she had momentarily hidden herself. “Ella, Lady Cheynes remembers you, though I don’t think you remember her.”
Ella raised her lovely eyes to the old lady’s face with a softer expression than Madelene had yet seen in them.
“I am not quite sure of that,” she said very gently, “things are beginning to come back to me a little. I almost think I do remember my—Lady Cheynes a very little.”
The old lady laid her two hands on Ella’s shoulders and drew her forward a little.
“Is she like her dear mother at all?” speaking half to herself and half to her niece.
“I scarcely think so,” said Miss St Quentin softly.
“Her voice is like Ellen’s,” Lady Cheynes went on, “and—yes, her eyes are like hers too. You must see it,” she added to Madelene.
“I do,” Madelene replied, honestly, though truth to tell she had not before perceived it; “I quite see it now,” for the gentleness was still in Ella’s eyes.