Chance Developments Read Online Free PDF

said Marjorie.
    Flora wondered whether her new friend said
Oh, nonsense
to everything with which she disagreed. How she would have loved to say that to Mother Superior or Father Sullivan. The occasional
Oh, nonsense
would have stopped them in their tracks, but nobody dared, of course. It was Protestants who said
Oh, nonsense;
they had been saying that since the sixteenth century.
    They were ready just in time.
    “You see what I mean about her,” whispered Marjorie, nodding in the direction of the kitchen stairs. “She had done nothing but polish the silver—of all things!”
    “You’ll have to get rid of her,” said Helena. “You can’t be held hostage to that sort of thing.”
    Marjorie looked at her watch. “Well, I’ll think about it. The problem is: these people won’t work.”
    Flora turned away. There was something about this whispered conversation that she did not like. She had exchanged no more than a few words with the maid, but they had smiled at one another and there had been a current of unspoken fellow-feeling. She had noticed that the maid had a rash on her wrist—some sort of skin complaint, she thought. Doing the washing up would not help that, she decided. There was a saint for skin disorders—Saint Lazarus, was it not? She could light a candle to Saint Lazarus…but then she remembered that candles were a thing of the past, and that if they were to be lit it would be by others; she would miss them, of course, as she always loved the smell they made when extinguished—a smell that was redolent of childhood and mystery and the love of her late parents whom she missed so sorely, even now.
    One floor below, a doorbell rang. Marjorie brightened. “Alan Miller,” she said. “I bet you ten shillings it’s him. On the dot of one. He’s like that German painter they used to set their watches by in Berlin. He always went for his walk at exactly the same time.”
    “Actually, darling,” said Helena, “it was a philosopher. Immanuel Kant. And it was Königsberg, not Berlin.”
    Marjorie brushed aside the correction. “Be that as it may, the point remains—it’ll be Alan, and Geoffrey Inver with him.” She turned to Flora. “Alan is mid-forties, and so, I believe, is Geoffrey. They’ve been sharing a flat for a long time—much cheaper that way. Gloucester Place. They’re both lawyers, but different sorts of lawyers, I think. Very charming.”
    “They’d both make very good husbands,” said Helena. “It’s a pity one could only marry one of them—otherwise you’d be able to get two for the price of one.”
    Marjorie seemed shocked by this. “Helena, darling!”
    “Just a joke,” said Helena.
    “Isn’t it strange,” said Marjorie, “how polygamy—where it’s permitted—allows men to have multiple wives but does not allow women to have multiple husbands?”
    “Would any woman want more than one husband?” asked Flora.
    Helena laughed. “Good point,” she said.
    They heard voices on the stair. A few minutes later, ushered in by the maid, two men appeared.
    “Darling!” said the taller of the men, stepping forward to embrace Marjorie. He kissed her on both cheeks. “And other darling,” he said to Helena. “Every bit as lovely, of course.”
    He stopped at Flora. “And
who
have we here?”
    Marjorie made the introductions. “Flora, this is Alan Miller. And this is Geoffrey Inver.” The other man stepped forward and took Flora’s hand. He inclined his head rather than trying to kiss her.
    Marjorie continued. “Flora is from Glasgow.”
    “Glasgow!” exclaimed Alan. “How brave!”
    “So near and yet so far,” said Geoffrey, making a vague gesture with his right hand.
    A further male guest arrived and then, shortly afterwards, another—accompanied by a woman. The man who came by himself was called Richard Snow. The other man was Thomas McGibbon, who arrived with a thin, rather nervous-looking woman in her forties who simply gave her name as Lizzie. “Lizzie is