A Woman of Consequence Read Online Free PDF Page B

like, ‘It’s none of your damned business.’
    ‘Georgie!’ she called after him angrily. ‘I do not think your mama would like to hear you using that word.’
    ‘But she can’t hear me, can she?’ he said and he was off – still scraping his boots with all his might.
    She watched him swagger away along the path, greatly angered by his self-consequence. He looked so disgustingly easy and prosperous in his fashionably cut blue jacket and his pale pantaloons …
    ‘Ah!’ she cried aloud.
    Her anger suddenly forgotten, she turned from contemplation of the retreating little gentleman and looked instead at the path along which he had come – a path which the traffic of ‘improvements’ had left almost an inch deep in mud … And she thought again about those pale, clean pantaloons …
    No one could have fallen upon that path without staining his clothes. It was an impossibility …
    So how had he come by such a bruise? And why had he lied about it?
    She almost ran after him, but stopped herself and stood irresolute on the muddy path in the gathering dusk and encroaching shadows of the ruins. Her curiosity – that powerful motive of her character – was now pulling her in two directions: urging her to pursue the boy with a question or two, but also demanding that she discover who was in the gallery.
    For someone was in the gallery; she had seen no one descend during her conversation with Georgie. And, since the boy had seemed to come from the shadows surrounding the nave, the person up there might well be the cause of the bruise. And besides, she would dearly love to know who else was taking an interest in the haunted ruins …
    She hurried into the deeper, slightly damp gloom between the high walls and picked her way across the broken pavement of the nave, where fallen pillars and great blocks of fallen masonry lay about, choked with weeds and ivy and deep drifts of dead leaves. A bird clattered up from a twisted ash tree which grew in the sanctuary, making her start foolishly. But she continued up the night stair, clinging with one hand to the ivy on the wall, and came into the deeper dusk of the gallery, which smelt of moss and damp stone – and which seemed, at first, to be entirely deserted.
    She stared along it, her eyes gradually accustoming themselves to the poor light. Parts of the roof had long since fallen away and the walls were dank and fringed with moss; tiny ferns grew in the gaps between stones. Beneath the holes in the roof, the floor was worn into hollows by rain which had fallen in upon it for centuries: in one particularly deep hollow water glinted darkly. On one side the arched front of the gallery gave a dizzying view down into the great nave of the old abbey church and the magnificent Gothic outline of the east window. And through the remains of the window’s stone tracery could be seen the muddy pool and the blazing red of the beeches and yellow of the chestnuts in the park.
    There was a movement beside one of the pillars that supported the roof of the gallery. A dark shape stepped out – and resolved itself into the figure of Captain Laurence. His back was towards her and he did not see her immediately. He stood instead gazing out through the great window towards the drained pool and the park. He raised a hand, rubbed his chin thoughtfully then turnedback into the gallery with a look of great calculation on his face – and saw Dido watching him.
    ‘Miss Kent!’ he stepped forward and bowed with a very uncomfortable look. ‘What are you doing here in the gloom?’ he cried. And then, changing his expression to one of tender concern: ‘Are you too hoping to discover what it was that frightened poor Miss Lambe?’
    She acknowledged that that was indeed her errand and he eyed her keenly. ‘And have you found out anything?’ he asked.
    ‘I have as yet had no opportunity to look about me,’ she said returning his keen gaze with interest. ‘I met young Georgie on the path just now. Has