“She speaks almost as she might if I had been an adopted child, with no real right here,” she said to herself. “It just shows—”
“And of course, Hester,” she replied haughtily, “it must seem as if I were one of the last women in the world ever to have to think of managing for myself or earning my own livelihood, but there are things that it is better not to explain. I may have my own feelings.”
“To be sure,” Hester replied, more and more perplexed. “But any way, Miss Ella, you’ll let me light a fire for you. It’d be far from independent if you was to fall ill of a bad cold, and your papa ill already, and just for this day or two with no one but you to see to him.”
Ella started.
“I forgot,” she said. “I forgot about papa. Perhaps I had better go and see if there is anything I can do for him.”
She was not exactly to blame for this thoughtlessness. Since her coming to Coombesthorpe her relations with her father had continued uncertain and constrained, and Madelene had judged it better to trust to time to bring about a better state of things, for the least effort on her part to force this would have been at once perceived and resented by Colonel St Quentin.
“Don’t tell that child to look after me while you and Ermine are away,” had been almost his last words to Madelene before she left. “If she thinks of it of herself that would be a different matter.”
And in ordinary circumstances the chances are that Ella would not have gone near her father. But Hester’s words reminded her that he was ill, and her conscience struck her.
“I’ll go to papa now,” she said. “He is in the study, isn’t he, Hester? He was to get up after luncheon.”
“Yes, Miss Ella, you’ll find him in the study. But maybe he’s asleep. Tap gently at the door.”