Portrait of a Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

opalescent glow, ivory pale, yet changeful in the flickering candlelight with all the glowing radiance of waves breaking gently on a cool shore.
    Who was she, I wondered? Envy stirred me for a moment, because I felt instinctively she must somehow, in some secret way, hold a place in Rupert Verne’s life.
    ‘ What a lovely portrait,’ I heard myself saying ineffectually.
    ‘ Yes.’ The one word fell short and curtly from his lips. I glanced at him expectantly. ‘Is it anyone —?’
    ‘ You’ll never meet her,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s just a good painting, and the setting is right. That’s why it’s there.’
    ‘ I see.’ But I was disappointed; I felt he could have told me so much more. His expression, I noticed, had tightened. There was a bleak guarded look in his eyes and in the set of his mouth that told me I trod dangerous ground and should stop questioning.
    So I said no more on the subject. More practical matters were discussed in which I learned I would not be seeing Signor Luigi until the end of the following week, when the chaise would arrive to take me to Truro.
    ‘ Dame Jenny will have time to see that your clothes are in order and suitable for your introduction,’ he added before leaving. ‘She’s an excellent needlewoman, and if anything is required word can be sent to Kerrysmoor. Jan Carne will bring a message.’ I wondered who Jan was, but didn’t ask.
    ‘ That’s right,’ the old lady said, nodding her head briskly several times. ‘These old fingers of mine mayn’t be as nimble as they once were, but I can still sew a seam or tuck, and put in a daisy or two when needed.’
    Her cheeks had turned very pink; she reminded me of a bedecked robin inquisitively inspecting its domain. I noticed also that her thin ringed hands had a tremor. No wonder Mr Verne no longer considered her quite capable of safely dusting and moving the treasured figurines and curios in the room we’d just left. I had misgivings myself when I considered the responsibilities were in future to be partly mine.
    Minutes later Rupert was at the door saying farewell. He held the tall beaver hat in his hand a second before replacing it on his head, turning, and walking briskly away down the path to the waiting chaise. During that brief second his eyes held mine again while excitement churned in me — an electrical awareness of communion binding all the nerves of my body into a hungry fire of desire.
    Against my will I made a slight instinctive movement towards him. Did his left hand make a faint gesture of acknowledgement beneath the lace cuff? Just for that fleeting instant did the lines of his stern mouth soften? — the lids quiver over the long golden eyes? I shall never know. My head and senses were whirling so that imagination became confused out of focus with reality.
    When my heart had steadied he was already at the gate. A minute afterwards he was ensconced in the chaise, and the vehicle, following a flick of the coachman’s whip, was moving down the shadowed lane, throwing a zig-zag of fading light before it, from the swaying lamps.
    Evening had faded into deep dusk. When we moved into the hall again Dame Jenny took me up a narrow staircase to my bedroom. The walls were all of white, the furnishings of light oak in an old world style. There was one window overlooking the garden at the back of the cottage. After the old lady had gone I pulled the curtains and looked out. The deep velvet blue sky was already pin-pointed by starlight, but the night was not yet dark enough to obscure the looming shape of the hill rising formidably against it. There was something else too — which I thought at first was probably my imagination. But in the morning I knew my conjecture to be true. Three gaunt shapes stood at a different angle from my first glimpse of them — silhouetted in the morning light.
    The Three Maidens.
    There was no practical reason why I should have sensed an omen in their presence. But I was filled with