“So did I,” Madelene replied. “That is just another vexation.”
The subject of the Manor dance was never named in Ella’s presence, but she was quick enough to see that it was in contemplation for her sisters.
“Will they really go so far as to leave me all alone?” she said to herself. “It will be a scandal if they do. If I am to be distinctly treated in this way, ignored as if I were about seven years old—they should at least be consistent and get a governess to keep me company when they go off and leave me alone. As if either of them was ever treated so at my age! What can Madelene want to go to a dance for—I am sure I wouldn’t if I were as old as she—and really, sometimes lately since she has had this cross fit, she has looked thirty.”
It was almost true. Poor Madelene’s real distress of mind at the failure of all her hopes with regard to her half-sister, had preyed upon her. She was one of those much-to-be-pitied people who have but little spontaneous power of expressing their deeper feelings; indeed the more she felt the less she showed it, though her very silence and apparent indifference told their own tale to those who knew her well. Ermine had good reason for feeling at the present juncture much more concern for Madelene than for Ella.
A week or two passed, uncomfortably enough. The weather, as in England is often the case, seemed to aggravate the dreary uneasiness of the mental atmosphere at Coombesthorpe. It rained—a steady, pitiless winter rain—almost incessantly for a week. There was no possibility of walking or driving, and more than once Ella found herself seriously picturing in her own mind the life she might now, had she exercised some diplomacy, have been leading with Mr and Mrs Burton, with actual regret.
“At worst, I might have gone out sometimes. In a town however it rains one can always get out a little—and here,”—and she moved away with a gesture of something approaching despair, as her glance fell on the gravel paths sodden with rain, on the dripping trees, on the stretch of park beyond the garden, where faint mists or clouds—it was difficult to say which—hid the horizon, and made one feel as if shut in in a universe of hopeless grey.
In those days Ermine, it must be owned, was barely kind, certainly not sympathetic towards the girl. She was sorry for her in her heart, but this very feeling caused a certain irritation, for Ermine’s nature was more prejudiced than Madelene’s; she was vehement in her affections, and where these were strongly engaged, she was apt to be one-sided. In one direction the two younger Misses St Quentin got on well together—Ella had shown herself from the first an apt and interested pupil, and about this time Ermine, rather to her surprise, remarked a distinct increase in her zeal and attention.
“This composition of yours is really very good—very good indeed, Ella,” she said one morning when she had been looking over an essay of her young sister’s, compiled from notes of various writers on a certain period of history. “At your age I could not have done nearly so well.”
Ella’s eyes flashed, and there was a peculiar expression about her mouth—there was however a distinct mingling of satisfaction in her tone as she replied, though coldly.
“I am glad you approve of it. I am glad that you think it above the average of what girls of my age can do.”