On receipt of this letter, Lady Milmo smiled astutely and took advantage of a confidential hour before bedtime to tread upon delicate ground.
“I shall always wonder why you refused Sylvester Lanyon, Ella,” she said meditatively.
The blood flew angrily into Ella's cheeks, and she turned away her head.
“I never refused him because he never did me the honour to ask me to marry him.”
“Perhaps he needed a little encouragement, dear,” said Lady Milmo, somewhat taken aback.
“He needs a lot to make a man of him that only his Maker could give him,” replied Ella, turning round vindictively. “His blood is a kind of Condy's Fluid, and his heart is a glass retort. He's just a piece of sentient mechanism. How do you think a man like that could ask a girl to marry him?”
“Well, he did once,” murmured Lady Milmo.
“He was different then,” said Ella, with a queer little shock of pain. “I used to like him. But now—now there is no one in the whole wide world I dislike so much. Sometimes when he comes here and talks to me in that cold, emotionless voice of his, I absolutely hate him. And if it wasn't for my dear old Uncle Matthew—” she broke off and rang the bell for her maid. “It's about time to go to bed, auntie.”
Lady Milmo made no response. A flash of the truth occurred to her; but the whole matter of Ella's state of mind was very complicated. She yawned behind gracefully lifted Angers.
“I think so too, my dear,” she said.