“Decidedly,” said Ermine warmly. But as she glanced at Ella, she felt chilled again by the hard look on the round young face. She would have felt more than chilled had she read the thoughts at that moment passing through the girl’s brain.
“Yes,” she was saying to herself, “I am clever, and they can’t deny it. I shall learn all I can, and then, if this goes on, I shall run away and become a governess. I should manage it somehow, I am sure.” Two days later, as they were going to bed one evening, Madelene called her for a moment into her own room.
“Ella,” she said, “Ermine and I are going away from home for a few days. We are going to the Belvoirs; you may remember our speaking of the invitation one morning when it came. Mrs Belvoir was here the other day, but you were out. They are nice people, and they give nice dances. When—when you are out I shall like you to go there.”
“Then they didn’t invite me this time?” asked Ella drily.
“They invited ‘the Misses St Quentin,’” Madelene replied. “That meant what we liked to decide ourselves of course. It does not rest with outsiders to determine if a girl is out or not.”
“Of course not,” said Ella. “Then,” she went on, “will you tell me what you wish me to do while you are away? Am I to be quite alone with Mrs Green (the housekeeper) as chaperon?”
“No,” her sister replied, irritated by the scarcely veiled impertinence of Ella’s tone, though a moment before she had been longing to express to her some of her own feeling on the matter, “no, certainly not. I am writing to ask Miss Harter, Mrs Hewitt’s sister, whom you have seen at Waire, to come to stay with you.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Ella. Miss Harter was a pleasant, intelligent woman of thirty, whom Ella had found amusing and agreeable enough once or twice when she had met her, though it now suited her to describe her to herself as “a fusty old maid.”
Things both great and small but very rarely turn out as we expect. Two days before that on which Colonel St Quentin and his two daughters were to leave home he fell ill. His illness was not very serious, but sufficiently so to put his going out of the question. And as he said that the presence of a stranger in the house would be an annoyance to him, Miss Harter’s visit was put off, Ella manifesting livelier satisfaction at this than she had condescended for long to show about anything.
“What an incomprehensible girl she is,” said Madelene, as she and Ermine drove away. “I think I must give up trying to make her out.”