The Benevent Treasure Read Online Free PDF

probably save her life. They would mean going into Retley and getting away from Underhill for at the very least an hour at a time, and with any luck a good bit more than that. If she and Derek were to go off on their own, she thought there might be ways and means of spinning out the time — letters for the post, errands to the shops, morning coffee. She met Derek’s eye and found it sparkling with mischief. Her spirits began to rise. She listened intelligently whilst Miss Olivia told her how Ugo di Benevento fled from Italy in the middle of the seventeenth century, taking with him what had come afterwards to be known as the Benevento Treasure.
    ‘He had got into some trouble of a political nature — it was so very easy in those days — and the family cast him off in what we have always considered to be an extremely cowardly manner. It may perhaps account for the misfortunes which fell upon them afterwards. As you will no doubt remember, Napoleon in 1806 bestowed what had been the ancient Duchy upon the upstart Talleyrand, with the title of Prince of Benevento. At the fall of Napoleon the province became once more a part of the Papal territories until 1860, when it was united to the kingdom of Italy. Our ancestor was well received over here. He married an heiress of the name of Anne Coghill and built this house. There have been alterations and additions of course. This room was, for instance, extended and greatly improved during the eighteenth century. In the generations since Ugo there have been many advantageous marriages. The Italian ending to the name was dropped, and Benevents have married into some of the noblest families in England. My father’s indignation at Candida’s mésalliance arose from this fact. John Sayle’s father was, I believe, a mere yeoman farmer. That his son took orders can hardly be said to excuse her.’
    Candida resigned herself. The great-aunts existed in the past — useless to try and disinter them. She really felt a good deal prouder of the yeoman farmer than of Ugo who had run away with the family jewels and married an heiress, but it was no use saying so.
    Miss Olivia continued to rehearse the births, marriages, and deaths of the Benevents, with Miss Cara nodding assent and occasionally putting in a word or two. It all felt very stiff and unreal, but in a sort of way it was interesting, like those stiff medieval pictures which it was so hard to relate to the living, breathing human beings who had sat for them. They had had real joys and sorrows, and hopes and fears. They had lost people whom they loved. They had lost their hearts, their heads, their lives. They had fought and conquered, or fought and been defeated. There was a kind of fascination about making them come alive and be real again. Her mood changed insensibly. After all, these were her people too — she ought to know something about them. Her eyes brightened and her colour rose.
    Derek Burdon watched her with genuine admiration. She might have been a pale, flabby girl with dead-fish eyes, or one of those skinny little things with bones instead of curves. Whatever she had been, he would have had to follow her round and amuse her. As it was, his luck was in.
    The discourse on the Benevent family went on and on.
    Chapter Four
    Candida went up to bed that night with the feeling that it wasn’t going to be so bad. The evening meal had been formally served by Joseph in a cavernous dining-room from whose gloomy walls dark family portraits frowned upon the scene. But the meal itself was beautifully cooked — a soup, a fish soufflé, a sweet. And then the white drawing-room again.
    It appeared that Derek had a pleasant voice and a light touch upon the piano, a lordly grand in a cream enamelled case. Candida found herself diverted to that end of the room, asked if she knew this or that, persuaded to join her own voice in a light duet. The Miss Benevents beamed approval and the evening passed very pleasantly.
    When she got up to her