Sally James Read Online Free PDF

small chair well away from its fellows.
    'Pray won't you be seated?' she suggested, and Sir Frederick, after a slight hesitation, sat as near to her as he could, at the extreme end of a claw-footed sofa. He was a tall and rather thin man, with faded yellow hair and rather protuberant blue eyes. Isabella noted with some apprehension that he was dressed with even more care than usual, and she had always considered him a fastidious dresser, although he did not, she suddenly thought, look nearly so elegant as Lord Fordington.
    'I wished to see you,' Sir Frederick was saying, 'although I have known you for such a short time Miss Isabella – I trust you do not object? – I have come to regard you highly.'
    'You are kind to say so,' Isabella interrupted swiftly. 'It is indeed a short time since you were down in Sussex, is it not?'
    'So short a time, and yet I feel it is going to prove the most momentous period of my life!'
    'You had rarely been in the country before, I understand?' Isabella said desperately, uncomfortably sure that Georgiana's prediction was about to be fulfilled.
    'Only a few times,' he replied now, 'for I have never followed the ton to Brighthelmstone. I consider it a rackety place, and from all I hear some of the goings-on at the Pavilion – h'mph, yes, well. Besides, my sister died some years ago and, until I had to attend to her husband's affairs when he died earlier this year, I had not been to her home for a considerable time.'
    'The sea-bathing is beneficial, it is claimed,' Isabella said desperately.
    'I hear many unlikely claims for its merits,' he replied, 'but whatever the value I cannot wholeheartedly approve of such a public display.'
    'Surely it is no different from the baths at watering-places,' Isabella offered.
    'But they are much warmer, and only fellow bathers are admitted,' he replied with a laugh. 'At least, so my wife told me when she went to Bath. Yet there was no cure to be found for her there, I fear.'
    'How sad! Particularly for your daughters,' Isabella felt constrained to say.
    'Yes, poor mites, left motherless, and Agnes was but a babe. It is five years since I was widowed, Miss Isabella, and my children left to face the world alone.'
    'No, surely not alone!' Isabella put in. 'They have an excellent father, I am convinced.'
    'But I alone cannot guide them. Matters might be different if I had been given a son, but poor Charlotte gave me only daughters. Not that I ever reproached her, you understand. I trust that I was a loving and considerate husband whatever the disappointments I had to bear.'
    'No doubt she, your wife, was disappointed too!' Isabella could not resist pointing out.
    'Naturally she was, and she blamed herself most bitterly. However, Miss Isabella, it was not to talk of my poor Charlotte that I came to see you this morning, although I am sure, since you are a most sensible young woman, you will understand my circumstances. No, it was to do with my present – ah, feelings, my situation at this time.'
    'Indeed?' Isabella uttered faintly when he paused expectantly.
    Sir Frederick smiled and rose to his feet, moving to lean against the mantelpiece and look down at Isabella. The smile lingered on lips which she suddenly noticed were moist and slack. Resolutely suppressing the urge to shrink away from him she cast about frantically to discover a way of averting the threatened declaration, but received no inspiration.
    'I have been most favourably impressed with your devotion to your young cousin, and to her unfortunate mother,' Sir Frederick continued. 'Although we have met but rarely I have formed an excellent opinion of your character, my dear Miss Isabella. I have been conscious for some time that I ought to endeavour to provide my daughters with another mother, someone who could guide them through the perils of this world, and at the same time, dare I hope, comfort me during the rest of my life – a life which has been empty and incomplete during the years since I lost