And Ella went up to her own room, and as she settled herself comfortably in the old nursery easy chair before the now brightly blazing fire, a “Mudie book,” which Madelene had thoughtfully provided for her in her hand, she did not look altogether an object of pity.
“Yes,” she said to herself, “I really do think if it came over again, papa would make them take me. I’ll try again to-morrow to make him understand better.”
But to-morrow, alas! brought disappointment. To begin with, the weather was atrocious. It continued bitterly cold, with the aggravation of just falling short of frost, and by nine o’clock the rain set in again, the cruel, pitiless winter rain, blurring the sky and the land with its grim veil.
Ella, who had planned a brisk walk early in the morning, gazed out of the dining-room window in despair.
“What can I do all day long?” she thought, and then as her eyes fell on the table where breakfast was waiting, she moved from it impatiently. “They might have let me have my meals in one of the smaller rooms,” she thought. “It looks too ghastly—that table and only poor me. I wish I had pretended to have a cold and stayed in bed.”
Just then her father’s servant came in with a message—a message not calculated to raise her spirits. Colonel St Quentin was not so well, very much less well this morning indeed. He was very sorry, the man went on, not to be able to get up. He would send for Miss Ella later in the day, but just now he was going to try to sleep a little.
“It’s too bad,” thought Ella, “just as we seemed to be getting to know each other better! And very likely Madelene and Ermine will make out that I’ve made him ill, somehow. Oh dear, I wish I hadn’t quarrelled with old Burton and then I could have asked auntie to have me on a visit?”
She had been so diligent the day before, that this morning there was even less than usual for her to do, and after the hour-and-a-half’s piano practising there was literally no obligation on her of any kind.
The library books were in perfect order, the flowers in the drawing-room had been all attended to, and if not, thought Ella bitterly, what was the use of dressing up the room for nobody to see!
The morning seemed interminable. Tired of the big, empty rooms Ella at last went off up stairs to give herself another dose of stocking-darning, as a preparation for the governessing which again began to fill her imagination as the only possible escape from this unendurable state of things.