Dorothy Eden Read Online Free PDF Page B

Your mother knows it, and I know it. The difference between us is that your mother doesn’t mind, but I do. What about you, Bea? You’d have more pride, wouldn’t you?”
    Desire was much stronger than pride. Didn’t Papa know that? Or was he so immersed in business that he recognised only people’s avaricious qualities?
    “I think you’re jumping to conclusions,” she reproached him. “Just because I was invited to a party at Overton House doesn’t mean that tomorrow I’ll be wearing William Overton’s ring.”
    “But you would like to be. Come on, love, confess.”
    “Yes. If he ever wants to put a ring on my finger I’ll let him. Whether it’s for my money or not.”
    “Good Gad!” Papa began stroking his moustache in a helpless way. “And I always thought you had plenty of sense. Supposing I decide to cut you out of my will.”
    Beatrice was alarmed. “You wouldn’t, Papa! Promise you won’t do that. It isn’t that I want the money for myself—”
    “But for that idle young man. Do you really think you could be happy in that kind of marriage?”
    “Yes,” said Beatrice. “Because I would make it a real marriage,” she added, after a pause.
    “Well, it hasn’t happened yet.”
    “No, but it will.” She knew, suddenly, that this was so. Her eyes, a soft moth-wing grey, had a glint as steely as that of her father’s. He recognised this, for he gave a short unamused guffaw.
    “Good Gad! I believe Master Overton may be getting a package he doesn’t expect.”
    “And for my wedding,” said Beatrice, “Miss Brown must be more careful. This dress was quite wrong for tonight. I looked a frump.”
    Papa’s knowledgeable fingers felt the material of her dress.
    “That’s the best Macclesfield silk. Can’t see how you could be a frump in something as good as that.” His eyes had a wry look. “Don’t let that lot patronise you, Bea. You’re my daughter, and I’m not a nobody.”
    “I’m not a nobody either,” Beatrice said.
    It did seem that William was serious in his intentions, for from that night he began an assiduous courtship which even Joshua Bonnington could not criticise. Although the word love was never spoken. Beatrice didn’t want it to be for that would make William a hypocrite. She guessed that, pressed by the family solicitors and his mother, he had accepted the situation reluctantly, but since he had accepted it he meant to carry it through. He was a man of honour. And he would not be the first gentleman in straitened circumstances who had made a marriage of convenience.
    When finally marriage was a certainty Blanche Overton, William’s mother, took Beatrice on a tour of Overton House. Beatrice had longed for this. She wanted to absorb everything about the house and took such a gratifying interest that Mrs Overton, who didn’t consider that the marriage contract meant she had to feel any fondness for her daughter-in-law, relaxed a little of her polite hostility.
    They progressed from the long music room to the yellow drawing room, then to the china room (the Overtons had always been collectors of beautiful things) and the mirror room, a frivolity of an eighteenth-century Overton who was said to have had some strange habits. Whatever riotous parties had taken place in this room in his day, it had later become more respectable, and was the traditional place for romantic proposals of marriage.
    To Beatrice’s regret, William had not made his proposal there. He had chosen the Heath, where the open spaces and the soft balmy air of a perfect summer day had improved his spirits and given him enough recklessness to commit himself.
    All the bedrooms on the first floor had quaint octagonal powder closets adjoining. They were used now as dressing rooms. If there were to be a large family of children in the house, they would make perfectly adequate bedrooms for nurses or governesses.
    The top floor was divided into much smaller bedrooms, servants being a species who didn’t