Seven for a Secret Read Online Free PDF

aunt.”
    Then we kissed and clung together, and I felt a wonderful sense of security creeping over me.
    A great deal happened in the next few weeks. There was an auction of the furniture which raised more than we had hoped for, for among it were some treasures which my mother had brought with her from Cedar Hall.
    Meg and Amy left for Somerset and the house was up for sale.
     
    My mother was taken to the nursing home in Devizes, which was not very far from Aunt Sophie’s house, so that we could visit her at least once a week. Aunt Sophie told me she had what was tantamount to her own carriage.
    “No more than a dogcart really, and it belongs to old Joe Jobbings who does an hour or so a week in our garden, and he’ll take us wherever we want to go.”
    Lavender House was up for sale. I took my last look at Cedar Hall with no regrets, as I blamed its proximity with its continual reminders of lost grandeur and ‘better days’ for my mother’s condition; and I left with Aunt Sophie for my new home in Wiltshire.

3i
    St. Aubyn’s
    I was very fortunate after such a tragic upheaval, not on! ) to have Aunt Sophie as my guardian but to be taken b-her to what must be one of the most fascinating count if in England.
    There is a strange ambience about that part of th country of which I was immediately aware. When I mentioned it to Aunt Sophie she said:
    “It’s the ancient relics You can’t help thinking of those people who lived here years and years ago, before history was recorded, and they’ve left their mark.”
    There was the White Horse on the hillside. One had to be some distance from it to see it clearly and it was mysterious; but chiefly there were the stones which nobody could explain, though they guessed they had been put there long before the birth of Christ to make some place of worship.
    The village of Harper’s Green itself was very similar to many other English villages. There was the old Norman church, which was constantly in need of restoration, the green, the duck pond the row of Tudor cottages facing it, and the manor house -in this case St. Aubyn’s Park, which;
    had been erected round about the sixteenth century.
    Aunt Sophie’s house was by no means large, but extremely comfortable.
    There were always fires in the rooms during the cold weather. Lily, who came from Cornwall, told me she could not ‘abide the cold’. She and Aunt Sophie collected as much wood as they could throughout’ the year and there was always a store in the woodshed.
     
    Lily had been at Cedar Hall. She had left her native Cornwall to go there, just as Meg had lett London; she was of course, well acquainted with Meg and it was a pleasure to talk of her to someone who knew my old friend.
    “She went with Miss Caroline,” said Lily.
    “I was the lucky one. I stayed with Miss Sophie.”
    I had written to Meg but her efforts with the pen were somewhat laborious and so far I had heard little from her except that she hoped I was well as it found her at present and the house in Somerset was a bit of all right. That was comforting and I was glad I was able to write to her glowingly of my own circumstances; and if she found difficulty in reading it herself, I was sure there would be someone who could read it to her.
    There were two houses of distinction in the neighbourhood. One was St. Aubyn’s Park and the other the red brick and gracious Bell House.
    “It’s called that,” said Aunt Sophie, ‘because there’s a bell over the porch. It’s high up, nearly in the roof, and it has always been there.
    Must have been a meeting house at some time. The Dorians live there.
    There’s a girl about your age . orphan. Lost both parents. She’s Mrs. Dorian’s sister’s girl, I believe. Then, of course, there’s the family at St. Aubyn’s. “
    “What are they like?”
    “Oh, they’re the St. Aubyns … same name as the house. Been there ever since it was built. You can work it out. The house was built at the end of the