The girls asked a hundred questions about their father, whom they longed to see.

They knew he had left home in consequence of some quarrel with his father--so much Lady Earle told them--but they never dreamed that his marriage had caused the fatal disagreement; they never knew that, for their mother's sake, Lady Earle carefully concealed all knowledge of it from them.
Lady Earle reached the Elms one evening in the beginning of September.
She asked first to see Dora alone.
During the long years Dora had grown to love the stately, gentle lady who was Ronald's mother.

She could not resist her sweet, gracious dignity and winning manners.

So, when Lady Earle, before seeing her granddaughters, went to Dora's room, wishing for a long consultation with her, Dora received her with gentle, reverential affection.
"I wish to see you first," said Lady Helena Earle, "so that we may arrange our plans before the children know anything of them.

Ronald will return to England in a few months.