Colonel St Quentin was pleased and touched.
“You must have practised diligently, my dear,” he said. “You find it less tedious now, do you not?”
Ella hesitated.
“I shall never care much for playing,” she said. “But I am glad you think I have improved. May I sing to you a little?”
“Certainly—you are sure you have no cold? You must never sing if you have the least cold,” said her father anxiously.
But Ella’s clear notes set all such fears at defiance. She chose two or three of the songs which she knew to have been her mother’s favourites, and she felt that she sang them beautifully. Her father said little, but she knew that she had pleased him.
A few minutes’ silence followed; then Colonel St Quentin said he felt tired and would go to his own room.
“I hope to be quite well to-morrow, or nearly so at least,” he said as he kissed Ella. “I really begin to hope I may escape easily this time,” for the poor man was from time to time a martyr to gout. “I am only sorry to have to leave you so early, but it gives me a better chance for to-morrow. Good-night, my dear.”
“Good-night, papa,” said Ella dutifully. “It isn’t very early. I generally go to bed at ten, and it is half-past nine,” this with the tiniest of tiny sighs. “What will they be doing to-night, papa? Do you think they will be dancing, just the party in the house, to try the floor, perhaps?”
“I can’t say, I’m sure. No, no, I should scarcely think so,” replied Colonel St Quentin, half consolingly, half irritably. Ella’s small shaft had gone home.