Kitabı oku: «The Third Miss St Quentin», sayfa 13
Chapter Fourteen
Differences of Opinion
As Philip was leaving that afternoon, Ella, whom he had not seen since luncheon, met him in the hall.
“Will you be so kind,” she began, “if it is not too much trouble – would you mind taking this little parcel to my godmother?” and she held up a small packet just twice the size of the one that had been transferred from his keeping to hers that same morning.
“Is it the shoes?” he said; “ah, I supposed so. Certainly I will give them to her. Shall I say you forgot them before?”
“No,” said Ella, colouring a little, “for that would not be true. Still I would rather she did not know of my having so nearly lost one; it would distress her and seem as if I had been careless. I don’t think you need say anything; just give her them from me.”
“Without telling her of their adventures? – very well. But, Ella,” – she looked a little surprised at his thus addressing her – “I must call you Ella; anything else would be absurd,” – he interpolated.
“Well, yes; I suppose so,” she said rather stiffly.
“You must warn Madelene – your sisters – that you don’t want my lady to know of the accident, otherwise she might very likely allude to it, especially with my having had the good luck to find it.”
Ella’s face fell.
“Oh, then,” she said, “you had better tell my godmother all about it yourself. It would be enough for me – I mean, Madelene would very probably make a matter of conscience of telling it, if I asked her not. She – my sisters do not give me credit for much good as it is,” she added with a slight smile, more bitter than playful, “However, it doesn’t matter. I will write by to-night’s post and confess all my sins myself to my godmother.”
“I think it would be both foolish and unnecessary to tell her anything about it,” said Sir Philip, who had his own reasons for not wishing anything more to be said about the episode of the shoe. “I can, if you like, say a word of warning myself to Maddie,” he went on, turning back as he spoke to the library. “At the same time,” as Ella made an eager gesture of assent, “I don’t agree with you about Madelene being so – so ill-natured and unfeeling and indeed, worse – hypocritical – as you seem to think her.”
His tone was quiet, but very grave. Ella started a little. It was not so much that he convinced her by what he said, as that she was shocked at hearing her opinion of her sister translated into the words of others.
“I – I did not exactly mean that,” she said confusedly.
“No,” Philip returned. “I am sure of that. Besides, of course anything you may say to me – in a moment of thoughtlessness or irritation, and we are all subject to such moments – about your sisters, cannot possibly do any harm.”
He smiled at her a little as he spoke – and Philip’s smile was very sweet – and then disappeared again into the library. Ella went slowly up stairs to her own room; a bright fire was blazing there.
“That speech may tell two ways,” she said to herself; “if he is such a very privileged and neutral sort of person, I suppose he will listen to all they say against me. What a fool I was to think he would sympathise with me!” and her cheeks glowed with annoyance. “Yet he might really have been a friend, for I know dear old godmother cares for me. I just wish I had chanced to meet them both elsewhere, quite independently of all the associations and influences here, for I am sure,” and a little smile flickered over her face, “I am sure Sir Philip did like me the other night – and now,” the smile quite fading away, “he will just look upon me as they all do – as a tiresome, spoilt little fool that needs any amount of sitting upon. Indeed, but for meeting me incognito, I don’t suppose he would ever have been nice to me at all. And the very thing they took advantage of to prevent our getting to know each other well and naturally, had just the opposite effect, my dear sisters! But why did godmother join in it?” and Ella’s brows contracted in perplexity. “I suppose Ermine can get her to do whatever she likes,” she decided, though the conclusion was not a thoroughly satisfactory one.
Just then Hester knocked at the door. She had come “to see to the fire,” she said, Miss St Quentin having given orders that during this very severe weather a good one was to be kept up in Miss Ella’s room all day.
“Did you go telling tales about my sitting up here in the cold then?” asked Ella, ungraciously enough.
“Not I, Miss Ella,” said Hester, calmly. “If you had gone for to do it again I’d have spoke up to the young ladies likely enough; but you’d have known of it, Miss Ella – I’m not one as goes aught but straightforrard.”
“Am I not one of the young ladies then?” said Ella.
“You’re just a contrary baby, Missie; sweet enough, I’ll not deny, when it suits you.”
Ella laughed, but her laugh was rather contemptuous.
“So you’ve had Sir Philip here, Miss Ella,” the old servant went on. “Wasn’t I right about him – he is a nice gentleman, isn’t he?” And Hester looked rather scrutinisingly as she spoke. Hester was not without a little harmless love of gossip.
“I’m sure I don’t remember what you said,” Ella replied indifferently. “If you mean that he’s nice-looking, yes; he’s not bad.”
But while she spoke she congratulated herself that she had not told Hester more particulars of the dance at the Manor.
“Not much chance of his ever being my prince,” she thought with a sigh, realising now the place which for the last day or two she had allowed “the stranger,” as they say in the old romances, to occupy in her vague, pretty day-dreams. For the girlish imagination at eighteen “gallops apace.”
Down stairs in the library meanwhile Ella’s two sisters were sitting together. Philip had left, after giving, as if of himself, the suggestion as to not mentioning to Lady Cheynes the narrow escape of the slipper – a suggestion at once appreciated and accepted. Madelene was writing; Ermine, under cover of a book and some work at hand on a little table beside her, was in reality doing nothing, except from time to time glancing at her sister.
“Maddie,” she said at last.
Miss St Quentin stopped writing and looked round with a slight touch of impatience.
“What is it, Ermine?” she said. “If it is anything very particular I’ll leave off, but I do want to finish this letter. It must go to-morrow, and you know I can never count upon doing anything in the evening.”
“It is a letter for the Indian mail then, I suppose?” said Ermine.
“Yes.”
“I – I wish you’d tell me what you are saying, Maddie,” said Ermine hesitatingly. “You know I don’t ask out of officiousness or curiosity.”
“I don’t suppose you do; all the same I wish you would leave the subject. It doesn’t do any good and it only makes it harder for me.”
“Tell me at least what you have said,” urged Ermine.
“You know the only thing I can say – the old story – while papa lives it is impossible.”
“And that is all Bernard Omar has won by five – six years’ waiting!” exclaimed Ermine indignantly.
“My dear Ermine, be just to me,” said her sister sadly. “I have never wished him to wait, nor encouraged him in the least to do so. And now – you must see for yourself that it is less possible than ever.”
“Because of Ella?”
“Yes, of course. I can’t leave this place. It would be wrong, considering it is mine, though eventually I feel sure it will be yours. But it would be too much, far too much to put on you alone, Ermine – the care of this place and papa, as he now is, and, in addition, Ella! No blessing would follow me if I acted so selfishly.”
“But if Bernard agreed to give up his profession and come and live here?” said Ermine. “He would not do so six years ago, and I think he was right then. But now– Heaven knows he has gained his laurels if ever a man did; and as for being idle, he would have plenty to do here in looking after the place and with his own writing.”
“Stop, Ermine,” said Madelene decidedly. “Such an arrangement is absolutely out of the question. Bernard would never feel he had a wife, nor I that I had a husband: coming into the midst of a family like ours would certainly not be the kind of thing he would like, and every existing difficulty would be increased.”
“You mean Ella, I suppose?” said Ermine; “and yet you are indignant with me for wanting Philip to fall in love with her and marry her. That would make everything easier. It would leave me at liberty to go hopping about a little, and perhaps somebody decent might take a fancy to poor me at last. Nobody ever has, you know, hitherto.”
“Nonsense, Ermie. Lots have, but you’ve snubbed them all, you know. Why don’t you go about more as it is?”
“And leave you alone for all the home worries? No, indeed – if you had a husband to help you, now.”
“Oh, Ermine, do leave the subject,” said Madelene wearily. “Of course, as far as we are concerned it would be delightful for Ella to marry Philip – it would make a different man of papa, I do believe; but neither papa nor we are the chief people to be considered. And I will not do anything to help on a marriage in that way – above all, with the grave doubts I have as to how it would turn out.”
“Well then, it’s to be hoped nobody ever will take pity on me,” said Ermine, dryly, “for assuredly I will never leave you here as things are.”
“It is fortunate then that the contingency in question, according to you, has not yet arisen,” said Madelene calmly, turning again to her letter.
Yes – Ermine had spoken truly. It was really six years since Madelene St Quentin had agreed to consider herself engaged to Bernard Omar, with the understanding that no one but her sister and Bernard’s old friend, Philip Cheynes, were to be taken into their confidence. For it was at that time that Colonel St Quentin’s health had begun to fail, and any additional anxiety or excitement was forbidden for him. Besides this, the engagement could not have been but an indefinite one; for Madelene, though but nineteen, had many responsibilities on her hands, and Bernard, three years her senior, was on the point of starting with his regiment for India. It had been due to an accident that an understanding, even between the two themselves had ever been come to, for Mr Omar was poor and Madelene was rich, and both were proud. But they had known each other since Madelene’s childhood; their mutual trust and confidence were entire; and trying though the long delay had been, it had yet been the great happiness of both lives.
Once only during those six years had Bernard, now Captain Omar, returned to England on a few months’ leave. He and Madelene had not seen very much of each other, for during some part of the time the St. Quentins had been abroad. But little as they were together, the two separated more deeply attached to each other, if that were possible, than before, and with fervent, if vague, hopes for the future. These hopes, however, were rendered vaguer still by Colonel St Quentin’s increased illness, aggravated, if not caused, by his money troubles, which made Madelene entirely renounce all idea of ever leaving him even for a few years’ sojourn in India. For some time she looked forward to Captain Omar’s retirement as the goal which was to see all difficulties set straight; but with the advent of Ella on the scene, her father’s morbid irritability, and her own ever-increasing duties, she began to despair. Breaking off the engagement seemed to her the only alternative, and she wrote to India to this effect, entreating Bernard not to dream of renouncing his profession for her sake, but to try to forget her and the weary years which had but led to ever-repeated disappointment. To this letter she had just received an answer. Captain Omar refused to come to any decision till they should again have met and discussed matters; in order to do this he had applied for leave and expected to be in England in the course of the next six mouths. But the tone of his letter seemed to Madelene cold, and her heart was very sore.
“He is getting tired of it at last,” she thought.
The situation was a complicated one, for though Captain Omar had distinguished himself both as an officer and a writer, in the eyes of the world his marriage with Miss St Quentin would be looked upon as greatly to his advantage; furthermore, he felt keenly that in offering to renounce his profession for Madelene’s sake he was giving the strongest possible proof of his devotion – devotion which it now seemed to him, or would have done so had he known her character less perfectly, was but faintly appreciated.
The letter was completed, folded, and directed. Ermine made a face at it when she saw it lying ready for the post on the side-table of their little sitting-room up stairs.
“I suppose Maddie has written to say that he need not give himself the trouble of coming here at all, or something of that kind. I do think it’s too bad. She is sacrificing any – ah, well, it’s no use thinking of that. I don’t believe the Marchants are going to ask me after all – and negatively, so to say, sacrificing Ella, too. I’m sure Philip admires her more than he has ever admired anybody before, but Madelene has such influence over him – a cold look or glance of hers would prejudice him – even without her meaning it in the least. And if I were Bernard I wouldn’t stand it, no I wouldn’t, and in one side of my heart I hope he won’t.”
Ermine stamped her foot – there was no one to see – with an energy which would have gone far to prove her relationship to fiery little Ella. “I won’t tell Madelene of the Marchants’ invitation, if it does come, till too late. If she is so obstinate I have no choice – I must follow suit, I suppose.”
The next day or two passed uneventfully enough. The weather continued bitterly cold, and Colonel St Quentin scarcely ventured to leave his room. One or other of his elder daughters was almost constantly in request to read or talk to him or write his letters. Ella paid him little duty visits and was always kindly received, but the sort of affectionate and almost familiar tone which had begun between the father and daughter while they were alone, seemed to have disappeared. Again there came over the girl the cold mortifying sensation of being but an outsider in her own home, and the vague scheme for her future which had momentarily, in the excitement of her visit to the Manor and the appearance of Philip on the scene, been half-forgotten, began again to haunt her restless little brain.
“This life is too dreary,” she said to herself, “day after day the same. No one to sympathise with me – no one to care what I do or feel or anything. It is becoming unendurable.”
But on the third morning of this unendurable existence – the fourth that is after Sir Philip’s visit to Coombesthorpe – something did happen. The post brought an invitation from Lady Cheynes to Madelene and Ella, to drive over the following afternoon to dine and stay the night with her.
“Ella!” exclaimed Miss St Quentin, involuntarily. “Not you, Ermine?”
“Why not, Ella?” said Ermine, and had she been speaking to any one but her adored Madelene, one would have been inclined to call her tone testy, if not snappish; “why shouldn’t it be Ella? You don’t want to set off like the graces, or the ‘three old maids of Lea,’ or any unfortunate trio of spinsters you like to name, whenever we go a visiting, do you? And I was spending the whole day at Cheynesacre yesterday.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you bring the invitation verbally, or at least you might have told me of it,” said Madelene. “You know Ella is not – ”
“Madelene would have liked to hear of it privately, so that I should never have known of it,” thought Ella, while aloud Ermine exclaimed impatiently.
“Not out, are you going to say, Maddie? You can’t give that as an excuse to Aunt Anna, for she certainly thinks she has a right to a voice in Ella’s concerns. And late events show she means to claim her rights too! As for my not bringing the invitation or telling you of it, I was not told to do so by Aunt Anna – you know she has her own ways of doing things.”
Madelene looked, – not annoyed, – but dissatisfied still.
“Did you know she was going to invite us?” she said again to Ermine.
But Ermine was at that moment busily reading a letter of her own, and either did not, or wished to seem as if she did not, hear the question. Be that as it may, Madelene got no answer. Ella, secretly enjoying her elder sister’s discomfiture, happened just then to catch sight of her face. It looked more than anxious; pale and weary and almost worn. Something in its expression touched Ella’s impressionable feelings.
“Poor Madelene,” she thought, with a rush of a kind of generous pity which she would have found it difficult to explain to herself. “I am sure she means to do right. And after all – if she does want Sir Philip to – to care for Ermine, why shouldn’t she? Ermine is her very own sister. Only – I wish it had all been settled and Ermine married to him before I came here.”
The softened feeling – as most feelings did with Ella – expressed itself.
“Madelene,” she said half timidly. “I am of course quite willing to do as you like – I mean as you think best – about going out at all or not. I know – I quite understood at the time that my godmother’s taking me to the Manor dance was an exception – a sort of extra thing altogether. And I am sure she couldn’t be vexed if you said it was best for me not to go out any more just yet, and if Ermine went instead. I do believe Ermine,” with a grateful glance in her second sister’s direction, “I do believe Ermine planned it to please me, and asked godmother to invite me instead of her.” Madelene looked relieved at this – some diplomacy had been exerted by Ermine the day before at Cheynesacre, she felt sure, and she was glad to think it had been thus simple – but Ermine, though she reddened a little, replied rather abruptly.
“No, Ella. I did not really. The inviting you was Aunt Anna’s own idea.”
“I will tell papa about it, Ella, and see what he thinks,” Madelene said. “But thank you, dear, for what you say. I shall be so glad for you to believe that interfering with any pleasure for you is my very last wish.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sir Philip Burns his Fingers
“Of course she must go; it would seem like dictating to my lady to make any difficulty about it,” Colonel St Quentin replied, when the subject of the Cheynesacre invitation was mentioned to him by Madelene. “What conceivable reason is there why she should not go?”
“I am very glad indeed for her to go,” said Madelene gently. “I only – was not sure, papa, how you might feel about it, because you know you would not let her go to the Manor dance at first, not till – ”
“Not till my aunt made a point of it and then I gave in, for which I suppose you think me very inconsistent – well, well, I am not going to defend myself, my dear. I dare say I am inconsistent and weak and foolish and in my dotage – what you like,” he replied irritably. “But one thing, Madelene, is certain, I am not going to quarrel with my aunt. She seems to have taken a fancy to Ella and she may be a good friend yet to the poor child. And Heaven only knows how soon she may need a friend.”
Colonel St Quentin sighed or groaned – his daughter knew the peculiar sound and it was inexpressibly trying to her.
“Papa,” she said, “you don’t know how you pain me when you take that tone about Ella. Of course I am delighted for her to go – but really sometimes I don’t know how to please you.”
“Well – well – never mind. I didn’t want to vex you. But I have something more important to consult you about. I have a letter from Mrs Marchant – did you know they had asked Ermine to stay there and that she had refused?”
“No,” said Madelene in surprise. “I know something was said about it at the Manor when we met them there – both Mr and Mrs Marchant and a brother of his were there, and they were speaking of gaieties they are going to have. But it was not definite. And why should Ermine have refused, without even telling me?”
Madelene’s voice sounded aggrieved.
“Nor me,” said her father. “But it is very sensible of Mrs Marchant to have written to me. She says she is sure Ermine would enjoy it, and that she only gave some vague reason of being wanted at home, or something of that kind. There is no reason why she should not go, is there?”
“None whatever, and every reason why she should,” said Madelene eagerly. “Papa, will you speak to her yourself, and say you wish it? She has only refused out of some exaggerated idea that we can’t get on without her here, and it is such a pity for Ermine to get in the way of shutting herself up. She enjoys society and shines in it; she is quite different from me.”
Colonel St Quentin glanced up at his daughter as she spoke. Her face was a little flushed with the interest of what she was saying, but still she looked ill and less serene than her wont.
“I don’t see why you should speak so of yourself, Maddie,” he said kindly. “When I get round again – when the weather’s a little better, perhaps, couldn’t we ask a few people? It might cheer us up – and little Ella would enjoy it.”
Miss St Quentin listened in surprise, not wholly unmingled with a less innocent sensation. For Madelene was not perfect.
“He would do for Ella already what he has never dreamt of doing for me,” she thought with a passing flash of bitterness. But she quickly overcame it. “If you felt able for it, certainly, papa. We might think of some nice people. That would be when Ermine comes back. Let me see – when do the Marchants want her?”
She took up the letter which her father held out to her, and some discussion as to the journey and other details followed. And then Madelene, with a brighter face than she had had for some time, went off to summon Ermine to an interview with her father.
At luncheon that day Ella was struck with the increased cheerfulness of the family party, and for some little time her powers of discernment were baffled as to the cause.
“Can papa have decided I am not to go, and can they be looking so pleased on that account?” she said to herself. “Can they – Madelene at least, for after all it is she that is looking the cheeriest, can she be so horrid?”
But as no allusion was made to the Cheynesacre invitation – which in point of fact had for the moment been forgotten by the elders of the party in the greater excitement of Ermine’s projected visit – she could not or would not not approach the subject, till her elder sister and she happened to be by themselves. Then said Ella in a voice which though sounding timid and even meek was in reality soft with restrained indignation.
“Have you asked papa, Madelene? Is – is Ermine to go, then?”
“Of course,” Miss St Quentin replied. “He decided at once and he has told her so. In her heart I am sure she is pleased though she is pretending to grumble a little. But I am so pleased – and I am sure Philip will be too to see her there, though he won’t be there the first part of the time.”
Ella scarcely attended to the latter part of this speech, so almost boiling over with indignation did she feel.
“Oh indeed,” she said icily. “Then of course you will explain it all to my godmother. I should like to have thanked her for thinking of me, but for the future I hope she will not go through the mockery of inviting me.”
Madelene stared at her.
“What do you mean, Ella? What has Aunt Anna got to do with it? And, by the by,” as the first hazy perception of some element of cross-purposes began to penetrate to her brain, “how did you know about Ermine’s going at all? She couldn’t have told you about it when she hadn’t told me?” and there was an accent of pain in the last words.
Ella stared in turn.
“You told me yourself – this morning at breakfast when Lady Cheynes’ invitation came,” said she.
Madelene stood still and began to laugh.
“My dear child,” she exclaimed, “I am so sorry. I had forgotten all about to-morrow. Yes, certainly you are to go – you and I. Papa is quite, pleased, and of course if he is, I am. What I was talking about was quite another matter,” and she went on to tell Ella all about the invitation Ermine had received and her pleasure that it was to be accepted. Never had Madelene been so confiding and companionable to her before; she seemed a different creature.
“She is very unselfish,” thought Ella, and she felt ashamed of her own suspicions, as she heartily joined in Madelene’s pleasure.
“You see,” Miss St Quentin went on, “we have lived rather a shut-up life – for even travelling is often shut-up, though it sounds absurd to say so, and Ermine is still young – I don’t want her to begin fancying she is not. I should like her to go about more.”
“You would like her to marry, wouldn’t you?” said Ella, calmly, though softly. But the calmness rather took Madelene’s breath away.
“Yes,” she said honestly, though the colour deepened a little in her fair face. “I should. But,” she went on rather confusedly, for to her there seemed something slightly coarse in the bald connection of the two ideas, “it isn’t exactly that – girls often marry just as happily who stay at home.”
Ah, thought Ella, I understand. “Is it far from here where Ermine is going?” she asked.
“Not very; still it is a new part of the country to her, which will make it all the nicer. Philip will be there part of the time, too. They are old friends of his. Mr Marchant’s half-brother (his mother married twice; her second husband is Lord Farrance) Guildford West, was at school and college with him. He was at the Manor. I dare say you danced with him. A small thin man, much smaller than Philip and not nearly so good-looking.”
“I don’t remember,” said Ella indifferently. “Then you are quite sure you wish me to go to-morrow to Cheynesacre?” she added.
“Of course,” Madelene repeated bewildered by the change in Ella’s tone, which had lost all its sympathetic softness again. “I am delighted that papa seems relaxing a little about you, and by degrees I hope it will be rather livelier for you here. If – ” and here Madelene, cold, stately Madelene for the second time that afternoon blushed a little – “if Ermine were married, it would make everything seem brighter, I think.”
“Yes,” said Ella, “to you I suppose it would do so, if she married somebody you thoroughly liked. And – if she were to live near you, too.”
She spoke with a kind of clear cold precision which would have caught Madelene’s attention had she been less pre-occupied. But she was full of pleasureable excitement about Ermine’s plans, and it was almost with an effort that she listened to Ella.
“Yes, of course,” she replied half absently, “that would make it much nicer.”
And Ella drew her own conclusions.
It was with curiously mingled feelings that she looked forward to the visit to her godmother’s the next day.
“Very likely,” she thought, “Sir Philip will not be there. As Ermine isn’t going Madelene and his grandmother won’t mind whether he is or not. No,” she went on, “no, it isn’t my godmother’s doing. I won’t think it. It is only Madelene – I don’t even feel sure that Ermine herself wants it. She, I must say, always seems pleased to put me forward. I’ll never forget Madelene’s face when she saw whom I was dancing with that evening at the Manor.” Madelene however did not seem as devoid of interest in her young sister, as Ella in her present mood would have liked to imagine. One of the prettiest of the frocks she had brought with her from her aunt’s, was looked out and revived by Mélanie’s skilful hands, under Miss St Quentin’s own supervision, and Ermine herself assisted at Ella’s toilet.
“You look lovely, – doesn’t she now, Maddie?” she exclaimed, when Madelene glanced in to say that the carriage was round. “Now don’t look forbidding – let me spoil the child a bit for once. That shade of pink does suit her —almost better than white. It’s the shade Philip likes so – now, Ella, don’t forget to ask him from me if it isn’t his favourite colour.”
“Do you often wear it?” said Ella, meaningly.
“Bless the child, what does Philip care what I wear?” exclaimed Ermine.
But Madelene’s displeasure was not to be mistaken this time.
“Ermine,” she said coldly, “you really must not run on so heedlessly. Of course Philip cares. Even if he were really our brother, as you like to say he seems – he would care. And he will care about Ella too because she is our sister. But you shouldn’t talk such nonsense – I mean send silly messages like that. It would make Ella feel and look quite foolish.”
And she turned back for an instant as she and Ella were going down stairs, to reprimand Ermine still more sharply.
“Do you want to teach the child to flirt?” she asked. “You have agreed with me that there was quite enough tendency of the kind about her already. You will be getting into trouble, Ermine, if you don’t take care – making her fancy Philip is in love with her, and preparing great unhappiness for her, poor child, perhaps.”
But Ermine only laughed.
“Nonsense, Maddie,” she said. “Why must you always be so gloomy about everything? You really needn’t be so cross to me when I’ve given in so sweetly about going to the Marchants – all to please you, you know.”
And Madelene could not resist her kiss, nor resent the whispered warning at the last moment – not to spoil Ella’s evening by looking severe.
Ella was scarcely in a humour to have been much depressed or impressed by her sister’s looks. Her spirits rose with every yard that separated them from Coombesthorpe, and when they arrived at Cheynesacre and were received in the drawing-room by her godmother the girl flew into her arms as if she had been a caged bird escaping at last from its gloomy prison into sunshine and brightness.
“Oh, dear godmother, dear, dear godmother,” she whispered, “I am so pleased to be with you again.” It was impossible not to be touched; she was so genuinely sweet, and she looked so pretty. There were tears in the old lady’s eyes, as she kissed her god-daughter.
“My dear little Ella,” she said. “Then you have forgiven me?”
“Forgiven you?” Ella repeated; “what for, dear godmother?”
