A London Season Read Online Free PDF Page B

hear the doorbell, Joshua, says I? Why, Mary, says he, you must listen for it and give me a bit of a nudge, and then I can open the door to Sir Edmund, as is only right, says he, and you can take him in to see Miss Radley! So that is what we did, sir,” said Mrs. Howell, unnecessarily. “And now, if you and the young lady will just step this way?”
    Evidently satisfied that he had played his due part in the proceedings, Howell had disappeared half-way through his wife ’ s speech. She was now ushering Sir Edmund and his ward through the hall, and into a drawing room which lay at the back of the house.
    With memories of his draconian Cousin Sophronia in his mind, Sir Edmund hardly expected to receive so immediately pleasant an impression as he did on entering this apartment. The hall itself had seemed cluttered with graceless furniture, just the kind of thing he would have imagined the old lady to possess, and certainly the drawing room contained a number of similar pieces: large, dark and heavy, some of them covered by dustsheets. These, however, had all been pushed to one end of the room, which was not particularly tidy, and indeed appeared to be in a kind of transitional state, as though it were being progressively dismantled. But it had large windows, through which the late afternoon sun streamed in, and a bright little island of comfort and warmth had been created beside one of these, at the other end of the room from the crowded furniture. Here, a fire of fruitwood logs burned clear and fragrant in the grate, some elegant chairs were disposed on a handsome Persian rug, and there was a sizeable desk in the bay of the window itself, standing in a pool of sunlight. This desk was covered with neat stacks of paper, and a young lady sat at it writing.
    Sir Edmund was looking about him for his late cousin ’ s companion, described to him by Mr. Stanfield as a very respectable spinster lady. Miss Radley, he knew, was a distant connection of Lady Emberley ’ s on the other side of her family from himself, and that was all the information he had about her. He now saw that the girl at the desk had risen, putting down her pen, and was coming to meet him.
    “Sir Edmund Grafton?” she said, in a pleasantly modulated voice. “How do you do? I am Elinor Radley. I think Mr. Stanfield has mentioned to you that I was Lady Emberley ’ s companion for the l ast seven years.”
    Rapidly readjusting his ideas, Sir Edmund said, “I am very glad to meet you, Miss Radley; let me introduce my ward, Miss Persephone Grafton.”
    At a second glance, he saw that the lady was less young than he had at first supposed, being perhaps about five or six and twenty, and with a quietly assured manner that was not that of a girl. She was no dazzling beauty like Persephone, but nevertheless there was something very taking about the warm smile which extended to her fine grey eyes, her shining chestnut hair arranged in neat bands, and her slim figure in its sober dove-grey gown trimmed with black crape ribbon.
    For her part, Miss Radley, who had felt a very natural curiosity about Lady Emberley ’ s heir, was looking appraisingly at Sir Edmund. She liked what she saw: a tall, well-knit and athletic frame, clad in white doeskin pantaloons and a riding coat of blue superfine; a lean, strong - jawed face with what she suspected were deceptively lazy blue eyes, and a humorous set to the mouth. The first grey, she saw, showed in Sir Edmund ’ s dark hair. From his easy manner, no one would have guessed how different he found Miss Radley from the elderly spinster of his imaginings, had not Persephone given him away by uttering a delighted trill of laughter (the first he had yet heard from her) and exclaiming, “Why, you ’ re not an old cat after all!”
    “Well, I hope not,” said the other girl, gravely, “but one can never tell when old cattishness may overtake one, to be sure! I am so pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Grafton.”
    “You