The Beautiful Thread Read Online Free PDF Page A

chairs.
    â€œToo late?” the abbot enquired cautiously. “Oh! Maybe you don’t think so?” A shaft of hope gleamed in Lady Florence’s penetrating eye. “Well, at least I can console myself I’ve done what I can. I had a most stormy interview with Gervase last week. I thought I was being fair to the girl. I even offered for us to take on the children – save her the expense of their upbringing. I expect we could find a place for them, and a suitable occupation.”
    â€œThe children?” Abbot John frowned, perplexed. “ Hannah’s children? An occupation? One’s barely three and the other but a babe.”
    â€œYes, yes, I know. Well I expect they could be accommodated out of the way somewhere.”
    â€œBut… why…?”
    â€œPresumably” – Lady Florence fixed the abbot coldly with her gaze and explained with exaggerated clarity – “what she wants is money. And the children will be an impediment if this match does not go ahead. So I offered to step in. If that’s what it takes to get rid of her, we can take the children so she is free of that burden, and even give her some small settlement in consideration of the time and expense involved in rearing them thus far. I am sensible of our obligations. I suppose they must be Gervase’s.”
    John blinked.
    â€œIn my day,” interposed the lady’s ancient mother, her eyes glittering like jewels of Whitby jet set into a lacy skein of wrinkles, “such audacity would have been unthinkable. Even the most froward upstart would have stopped short of thinking herself capable of worming a way into the Neville family. Or the Bonvallets. Nobody in my generation would have contemplated anything of the sort. Young people nowadays seem to think family doesn’t matter – it’s all about love. Love! Ha! What do they know? Abandoning all standards, all sense of decency.”
    She drew back slightly in her chair, her face giving the impression of having detected an offensive odour in the near vicinity. Whether the abbot replied or not seemed a matter of complete indifference to her.
    â€œGervase said he would have none of it,” Lady Florence continued. “He spoke to me most pugnaciously – with extreme disrespect. He insists on seeing this whim through. But what will he do with her once he’s got her? Does he imagine he can bring her home? To our manor? She is coarse – common in the extreme. She is of most inferior stuff. She has a certain competence in practical matters, I suppose. I gather she tends a flock of goats out on the moors. But her accomplishments and abilities are those of the lower orders. Gervase brought her once to our house – it was an absolute disaster. They had a fair on the green that day, and he’d promised to take her. She wanted to see the man with the hurdy-gurdy, she said, and the children dancing.” (Lady Gunhilde’s lip curled as she heard this, and she turned aside her head in incredulous disdain.) “But Gervase and his brothers – Hubert and Percival; I think you know them – wanted to practise their bowmanship, out upon the lawns. Her duty of course was to encourage and admire, but after only a couple of hours she became positively petulant. She wandered away eventually, and Gervase had to stop what he was doing and go in search of her. He found her curled up like a child on a garden bench, weeping . Can you imagine? All because she’d missed the fair! That’s the kind of girl she is, you see: childish. She can’t help it; it’s just that she’s from that kind of family. Preoccupied with trinkets and baubles, with diversions and amusements. She has no backbone, she doesn’t know her duty – she has no idea how to behave.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t have been like that in my day,” Lady Gunhilde observed. “ We knew how to behave. My generation had the highest