The Third Miss St Quentin

“You must not think me weak and foolish for having given in to your aunt, when I had stood out so – well, I suppose I must say – obstinately with you and Ermine,” he said with a slight smile.

“Ermine and I were only too delighted for Ella to have the pleasure of it,” Madelene replied.

“I knew that – I was assured of that,” said her father, and then the subject was allowed to drop.

Ella was looking very demure in her grey linsey-woolsey, waiting beside the tea-table in the library, when the two others joined her. A smile which she could not altogether repress, crossed Ermine’s face as the contrast between her little sister’s present “get-up” and that in which she had last seen her, crossed her mind.

“Oh, well, I’m not sorry to be home again,” she said aloud. “What do you think, Ella? Would you like to have yesterday night over again?”

Ella looked up with a half doubtful questioning in her sweet eyes. Was Ermine chaffing her, or was this veiled sarcasm, or what? But before she had time to form any judgment on the matter, to her surprise Madelene interposed.

“Ella,” she said – she was standing near the fireplace, and her tall figure in its dark winter garb looked very imposing, though her face, had Ella seen it clearly, was gentle and almost touching in its expression – “Ella, my dear,” she said, “I want to say to you now, at once, that I am very sorry I so misjudged you last night, blaming you when you did not deserve it – when indeed you could not have deserved it; for a moment’s reflection might have shown me you could not have come to the Manor unknown to or unapproved of by papa. But I was so astonished that for once, I suppose I lost my head. Will you forget about it, and believe that I am very happy you had the pleasure?”

“Of course,” said Ella. “I often am hasty myself – I never dislike any one for being a little cross,” she went on, smiling. “I’m very glad you liked me to be there. Papa was very kind about it,” she added, unable to repress a little hit at her sister, “he agreed to my going at once when my godmother proposed it.”

Madelene’s face grew cold again.

“Why could you not stop at the right place, you foolish child?” thought Ermine. But she kept her thoughts to herself – a glance at Madelene had told her that it was best so.

Outwardly, however, things seemed most prosperously smooth.

“Your frock looked lovely, Ella,” said Ermine. “Mélanie will be quite jealous of Jones.”

“And it is really not spoilt at all,” said Ella, eagerly. “But oh, Madelene, that reminds me – I had such a misfortune.”

Miss St Quentin looked up anxiously. To her nature any appeal for sympathy always brought healing on its wings.

“What?” she said, expecting to hear of some trifling accident. Her face expressed real concern when she heard the particulars of the lost shoe.

“We must certainly try to get it back,” she said. “It is pretty sure to have been picked up. Only if any dishonest servant has got hold of it, the buckle would be a temptation; an ignorant person would so easily mistake the paste for diamonds – I will write to Mrs Belvoir to-morrow, Ella – it is too late to-night – and send over a man expressly.”

“Thank you,” said Ella. “But,” she went on, “will she understand? Did she know I was your sister, as I didn’t come with you?”

“Of course,” said Madelene haughtily. “You don’t suppose Ermine and I would have given any cause for gossip. We took care to speak quite naturally the next morning about Aunt Anna having brought you over for a little – it was all Louis Belvoir, who Mistook your name at the first.”

“Oh yes, I see,” said Ella. She seemed on the point of saying more, but her courage failed her.

“I wonder if they know who the man was that I danced that last waltz with,” she said to herself.

Ermine seemed to play into her hands.

“How did you like young Belvoir, by the by, Ella?” she inquired. “He dances well, doesn’t he? What other men did you dance with?”

But Ella was not going to be trotted out, especially not before Madelene, whose eyes, she fancied, and perhaps not without reason, were fixed on her scrutinisingly.

“There were several,” she replied; “I didn’t hear all their names distinctly. Yes, I thought Mr Belvoir danced well, but there were one or two others who danced quite as well.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Ermine. “No one in particular, then?”

“Major Frost was very amusing,” said Ella.

Madelene, who had finished her tea, put down her cup and turned to the door.

“We had better go up stairs and take our things off, Ermine,” she said.

“I am afraid Ella is the reverse of ingenuous,” she said when they had left the library. “We know she danced more with Philip than any one. She is a regular woman of the world in the way she can keep back what she does not choose to tell – it would be only natural for her to ask us who he was, if she really did not know.”

“Oh, Maddie, I don’t think you are fair about her,” said Ermine. “And talking of not being ingenuous – she might accuse us of it when she comes to know him. She will know we must have seen her dancing with him, if she takes the trouble to think it over, and our not mentioning his being there may strike her.”

“Well, it isn’t my doing. I hate mystifications,” said Madelene. “However as Aunt Anna is mixed up in it I suppose it will be all right. But – no, Ermine, I’m afraid Ella is not the sort of wife we should wish for Philip. And I’m afraid of letting myself wish it, lest I should really be influenced by selfish motives, for no doubt it might make things easier.”

“You’re enough to provoke a saint,” said Ermine. “However I don’t suppose either you or I will have much power to ‘make or mar’ in the matter. If it is to be, it will be – so far we haven’t meddled; we didn’t originate their meeting as they did.”

“People always take refuge in that sort of fatalism when they want to throw off responsibility,” said Madelene. “I don’t believe in fatality about marriages any more than about anything else. But I shall not interfere, I am far too uncertain of its being a good thing for Philip.”

“Maddie has had an Indian letter, and she has got a fit of extra conscientiousness in consequence,” thought Ermine. “If I were Bernard, I don’t think I’d stand it.”

And yet as she looked at her sister, and saw the gentle sadness in her eyes, and noted the increasing signs of endurance and uncomplaining patience in the delicate features, a sort of rush of tenderness came over her. No one better deserved to be happy than her own sweet Madelene, she said to herself.

The evening passed peacefully. Colonel St Quentin was pleased to have his daughters with him again, and pleased too with himself for feeling so much more cordial and affectionate than heretofore towards his youngest child. And Madelene was pleased too to see him so, for jealousy formed no part of her nature, though her exaggerated conscientiousness and self-questioning sometimes took the appearance of suspiciousness of others. Ella’s quick eyes detected her elder sister’s satisfaction at her father’s kindlier tone, and she felt puzzled by it.

“She does seem as if she wanted papa and me to get on better together, after all,” she thought, and the idea softened her own manner in turn. Besides this, she was, though she would on no account have confessed it, both tired and sleepy; the unusual excitement, more than actual fatigue had told upon her, and she was not sorry when Ermine, openly acknowledging that she was quite ready to go to bed, proposed that they should all say good-night.

“It’s quite disgraceful to be so done up after such a very mild amount of dissipation,” she said laughingly. “Philip would make great fun of us. He is coming over to-morrow, Maddie, you know.”

“Yes, papa says Aunt Anna left a message from him to tell us so,” said Madelene thoughtlessly.

Ella pricked up her ears at this.

“How could – ” she began, but something in the expression of her elder sister’s face made her stop short.

“Ah,” she reflected, “Madelene said that by mistake. They didn’t want me to know that precious cousin of theirs was coming. I shall hate him for being their cousin and not mine – only he is dear godmother’s grandson, and I should like him for that. Godmother must have had a letter from him while I was there, I suppose. She might have told me of it.”

And a feeling of resentment to Lady Cheynes too, mingled with her indignation against her sisters. Her “good-night” was correspondingly cold, but they did not seem to notice it.

“I will write a note to Mrs Belvoir to-night, Ella,” said Madelene in a low voice, as they were leaving the room, “to have it ready for to-morrow morning, so that one of the grooms can take it over quite early and wait for an answer.”

“Thank you,” said Ella, and for the moment she felt really obliged. The lost slipper was weighing a good deal on her mind, and she began to think that after all she would feel rather foolish if obliged to confess to her godmother how she had lost it.

“She will certainly say I should have found it out before I got into the carriage, but I quite thought it was among the rugs – and Jones looked herself for me, this morning. I think it must have slipped off just as I stepped in and rolled out before they shut the door.”

And her dreams were haunted by the slipper. She thought Madelene came down to breakfast next morning with it tied on to her head as an ornament, and that it suddenly skipped on to the floor all of itself, and became a wonderful white satin chariot which careered round the room drawn by six cats, while on the box sat her partner in her last waltz at the Manor, shouting at the top of his voice that he was going to take a note to Mrs Belvoir first thing in the morning, and to wait for an answer. And these words “wait for an answer,” seemed to mingle themselves fantastically with all the consciousness of her sleep. Or perhaps it seemed so to her, for they were the first that fell on her ears as she began to awake next morning. The door was opening and some one just entering was speaking to another person outside.

“Yes,” said the voice – it was old Hester’s – “wait for an answer – be sure to tell him.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Ella. “What is it about waiting for an answer?”

“It’s the message for the groom, who’s going to the Manor, Miss Ella,” Hester replied. “Miss St. Quentin gave me the note last night, and I was telling Stevens. She’s so sorry for you to be uneasy about the shoe – ‘taking off the pleasure of her first little treat, poor child,’ was her words to me, Miss Ella.”

“It’s very kind of her,” said Ella sleepily, with again the return upon herself as to her judgment of her sister. Suddenly a new idea struck her. “Hester,” she said, “what sort of person is Sir Philip Cheynes? Is he nice, or is he conceited and stuck-up, and – flirting, you know – that sort of a man?”

“Bless you, no, Miss Ella, not as ever I’ve heard tell. What’s put such a notion in your head? If he was stuck-up, he’d not be so to his own cousins; and he does think all the world of them, that he does. And as for being a flirting gentleman, he’d be uncommon clever to get Miss Maddie or Miss Ermie to join in such like nonsense, though by what I hear sometimes, young ladies – and young ladies who think a deal of themselves too – is not so partickler as they might be, now a days. I don’t hold with that tennis-playing, Miss Ella, and all that sort of apeing gentlemen, as seems the fashion.”

Ella laughed.

“Tennis is very dull, I think. I shouldn’t like to spend several hours a day at it,” she said.

“Sir Philip is evidently a prig of the first water,” she decided mentally. “But if so, he’s not likely to admire me, so why do they want to keep me out of his way, as I see they do? And they have got god mother to join them in it for some reason.”

Ella’s inward indignation sent her down stairs to breakfast in anything but a genial mood. And, as her moods were very apt to do, it found its expression in her outer woman.

“You do look so grim, Ella,” said Ermine. “I am so tired of that linsey-woolsey frock of yours – couldn’t you put a bit of scarlet about yourself somewhere? Even a red tucker would be an improvement.”

Madelene glanced at her younger sister as Ermine spoke.

“You might wear your sailor serge every morning now, I think, Ella,” she said. “That frock is getting shabby and it is a dingy shade. You remember we couldn’t get the grey we wanted. About Christmas time too, one likes to see people looking bright.”

Ella surveyed her garments with a half indifferent air that was rather irritating.

“I think it does very well,” she replied. “Even aunty thought two new winter frocks enough. I don’t see that it matters so long as it is warm, and indeed to tell the truth, I like this better than my Sunday frock; it is so clumsily made.”

Madelene said no more.

“Every step forward seems followed by two backwards with her,” she reflected. “Ermine had better not build any castles in the air about her and Philip – if she had the slightest suspicion that we should like such a thing, it would, I do believe, make Ella detest him.”

“I have sent over to the Manor, Ella,” she said as she rose from the breakfast-table; “the groom should be back by half-past twelve or so, as Mrs Belvoir is sure to be at home. I am sure you are feeling anxious about the poor little slipper.”

“I am,” said Ella. “Thank you, Madelene.”

And indeed it was partly distress of mind about the lost property which was making Ella indisposed this morning to take a roseate view of life.

“The weather seems really settling in for frost,” said Ermine. “After the rain it will make the roads very slippery. I hope the frost will last till after Christmas, now it has begun. I wish I could go a good long walk this morning, but I fear we mustn’t think of it – eh, Maddie?”

“No – there are arrears of things to see to even after being away only two days,” Miss St Quentin replied. “You might get Philip to take you a walk after luncheon, when I go to sit with papa.”

“And Ella too,” Ermine added. “Would you like a nice long walk, Ella? It would be a pleasant variety to have an escort for once.”

“No, thank you,” said Ella, stiffly, though in her heart she thought Ermine much kinder than her elder sister. “I don’t care for walking in the afternoon. I shall go out after I’ve finished my practising this morning.”

“Not alone, Ella?” said Madelene; “or at least if you do go alone, it will not be further than the grounds, I hope?”

“No,” said Ella, “I don’t mean to leave the grounds.”

She spoke more amiably – for this sort of authority or interference on her sister’s part did not irritate her, as it might have done some girls. She resented nothing which gave her the sensation of being considered a person of importance.

Twelve o’clock found her walking briskly down the drive which led to the principal entrance. The sharp clear air stimulated her nerves pleasantly; she felt high-spirited and almost happy. As Madelene had said truly, Coombesthorpe had a beauty of its own in every season.

“It is lovely,” thought Ella, as she looked around her, down across the gently sloping lawns to where the first murmur of water told of the stream pursuing its way, lonely now, without the merry companionship of its summer friends, the birds and gnats and butterflies; not to speak of the many quaint creatures who found their homes on its banks. “I wonder where they all go to?” she went on. “I suppose lots of them are asleep. I wish I knew more about country things. Ermine is so clever about them. I could learn all sorts of things from her if I was sure she – they – wanted to like me – ”

Then her gaze passed on from the thicket concealing the brook, up again to the hills rising beyond. There was snow on the higher peaks; to be guessed at rather than seen, for a thin wintry haze made hills and clouds melt into each other. Ella shivered a little.

“Fancy living up on those hills,” she thought. “And they say there are cottages there where the people stay all the winter. The road to the Manor passes round the foot of them. I wonder how soon the groom will be back. Oh, I do hope he will bring the shoe.” She had forgotten about it for the moment; the recollection made her hasten her steps. She would ask the woman at the lodge if possibly the groom had already returned; if not, she would walk a little way down the road, which for some distance beyond these first gates remained a private one, in hopes of meeting him, for it would be easy to ask if he was bringing back a parcel or only a note.

There seemed no one stirring about the lodge when she got there, which was unusual, as the couple who lived in it were the proud possessors of two very pretty children, one or other or both of whom were generally to be seen peeping out of the doorway when any one came by.

“They seem all asleep,” thought Ella, who had long ago made great friends with the little family. “I hope they’re not ill.”

She made her way to the door as she spoke, and tapped gently, at the same time endeavouring to “lift the latch,” like Red Riding Hood of old, and let herself in. But the door resisted; it was evidently fastened inside.

Ella tapped more loudly, and almost before she finished doing so, a faint sound of weeping caught her ear, but no reply came to her knocks.

“Is any one in?” she called out, beginning to feel a little uneasy. “Willie, Hetty, who is it crying? Mrs Rose, are you there?”

A sort of movement inside, sounding like the slow, enforcedly deliberate way in which a little, short-legged child gets down from a chair, followed by a pattering of small feet across the stone floor, became audible. Then a doleful voice replied to her questions:

“I’m all aloned. I’m Hetty. I dunno who you is. Mammy’s took Willie in Master Crocker’s waggin to doctor’s. Willie’s eyes is bad. And the pot won’t budge and the dinner’s spilin.”

Then ensued a louder burst of bitter wailing.

Ella rapped again impatiently.

“Let me in then, you silly child,” she cried. “I’m Ella – Miss Ella from the hall. You know my voice, surely, Hetty. I’m not a wolf,” she added, half laughing.

Thus adjured, Hetty cautiously approached.

“Miss Ella,” she said in a tone of relief. “I’ll try to loose the door, Miss, but its drefful hard. Mother locked it outside and pushed the key in under the door. I weren’t to open it till daddy comed home, but mammy didn’t know Miss Ella’d be coming,” she added, as if half in vindication to herself of her departure from mammy’s injunctions.

“Then do the same again,” said Ella. “Push the key under the door and I’ll open it outside. Your little hands can’t turn it.”

Hetty gave a sort of grunt of satisfaction at the brilliant idea. The key was pushed through, and in another moment, Ella stood on the open threshold. Poor Hetty’s face was swollen with crying and scorched by the fire, and her first greeting to Ella was a fresh burst of tears.

“’Tis the dinner – daddy’s dinner,” she exclaimed, and sure enough a rather ominous smell of burning drew Ella’s attention to the fire. Quick as thought the girl pulled off her thick jacket, tossed aside her fur cap – for the kitchen felt very hot after the keen clear air outside – and stood for a moment investigating the formidable-looking pot, which was the cause of Hetty’s woe.

“Give me a towel or something, Hetty. I don’t want to burn myself.”

Hetty stuffed a substantial cloth into her visitor’s hands.

“And a apern, Miss, or you’ll smutty your nice gown. Here’s one of mammy’s.”

Ella took the hint and tied it on, and well for the linsey-woolsey that she did so, as it was not without various black streaks on the vicarious apron that she succeeded in safely depositing “daddy’s dinner” on the hearth-stone.

“Goodness! how heavy pots are,” she exclaimed, “and how the fire does scorch one’s face – even a little one like that. I don’t think the dinner’s much burnt, Hetty,” she went on, carefully investigating the contents of the stew-pot with the aid of an iron spoon, and sniffing them gingerly at the same time.

“Stir it about, Miss, please, so as it won’t stick to the sides,” suggested Hetty; which Ella proceeded to do, thinking to herself the while, that if all other trades failed her, that of a cook would be little to her mind.

“Now, Hetty,” she said, “I think this’ll take no harm, staying where it is. When does your father come home? It’s about his time, isn’t it?” as the clock struck the half hour to one.

“He should a’ been home before, Miss Ella, else mammy wouldn’t a’ left me and the pot aloned. But there’s a deal to do in the houses, now it’s so cold, a’ seein’ to the fires,” – her father was one of the gardeners – “and maybe Mr Meakins has kept him late. But it’s all right now, Miss, and thank you,” said six-year old Hetty, remembering for the first time to bob her courtesy. “Would you like to wash your hands, and there’s a smut on your cheek? You’ve made it worser,” as Ella involuntarily raised her hand to the indicated spot.

“Thank you, Hetty, perhaps I’d – ” Ella began, when suddenly the sound of horse’s feet approaching, reminded her of her original errand at the lodge. “There’s the groom – the groom from the Manor,” she said, flying off, forgetful alike of smutty marks and “mammy’s” big apron in her eagerness, and heedless of Hetty’s assurances that she could open the gate, anxiety as to which the little maiden supposed to be the cause of the young lady’s excitement.

Ella’s ears had not misled her. A horse was waiting at the gate, but scarcely had she called out to its rider —

“You’ve been at the Manor; what message is there?” when a glance upwards told her that she had made some great mistake. It was no groom who sat there, gazing at her in speechless astonishment – it was a gentleman; so much she perceived instantaneously; but this first flash of surprise was as nothing compared with the shock of astonishment which succeeded it when in another half second her eyes told her brain what at first it refused to accept – the rider was her partner – her partner par excellence that is to say, of two nights before at Mrs Belvoir’s dance.

But if Ella was surprised, what was the effect on the new-comer of the sudden apparition of the mysterious little personage who had made so much impression on him? Was it she – “Miss Wyndham,” or was it only a case of extraordinary resemblance? Yet if not Miss Wyndham, who then? He knew the Roses at the lodge, as well as he knew himself – Mrs Rose was the only daughter of one of his own tenants, and though a comely young woman, in no way exceptionally pretty – this girl could be no sister or cousin of hers, he felt sure. Yet again his hasty glance had shown him that she was not in the ordinary attire of a lady; she was half covered by a huge and not over-clean apron, her hair was pushed off her forehead, her face was scorched-looking and a grimy streak crossed it on one side. “Miss Wyndham,” if Miss Wyndham it were, must be playing a part in a comedy, or else – could it be that the girl he had been so struck with was not a lady; that in some clever way she had inveigled herself in among the smart people at the Manor, and that this was the meaning of her strange, half mysterious, half reticent manner? A curious and by no means agreeable thrill passed through the young man as this last idea drove its predecessors out of his mind with the rapidity of lightning. Hetty meanwhile had run out and was fumbling at the gate. The sight of the child brought Philip back to matters-of-fact.

“I will open myself, Hetty,” he said, for the elder girl stood as if transfixed making no effort to help the little one. And in a moment he had dismounted and was leading his horse through the gateway.

They both stared at each other for half a second. Ella was the first to speak, though her cheeks glowed more and more as she did so. Happily she had forgotten all about the sooty mark on her cheek.

“I beg your pardon for mistaking you,” she said. “I thought you were the groom from – ”

“I cannot beg your pardon,” interrupted Philip, “for I am absolutely in the dark as to whether I have mistaken you or not. Are you – ” but here he hesitated, though the tone of her voice and the manner of her speech had almost satisfied him that his recognition had been correct – “are you Miss Wyndham, and if so – what in the world – ”