The Chinese Shawl Read Online Free PDF Page B

him why she had been angry.
    “My cousin Agnes Fane wants to buy the Priory and leave it to Tanis. I don’t know why that made me so angry, but it did. One minute I was sitting there just polite and interested, and he was telling me all about the feud and the relations, and the next minute I felt as if I was going up in a puff of flame exactly like a firework. It was a horrid feeling.”
    “It must have been.” His voice was sympathetic, but his eyes laughed.
    “I’ve got a temper—I told you I had—but I’ve never been so—so unreasonably angry. It’s rather frightening, because I did feel as if I could have done anything—” She paused, and then repeated the last word. “Anything.”
    He saw that she had turned quite white, and that she really did look frightened. He said in a steadying voice,
    “What did you do?”
    Her colour came back again with a rush.
    “I just said that I wouldn’t think of selling, and when he tried to persuade me I listened for a bit, and then I got so boiling that I couldn’t any more, so I came away.”
    Carey said thoughtfully,
    “So he tried to persuade you—”
    Laura nodded.
    “He’s Cousin Agnes’s lawyer too. He knows her awfully well. Aunt Theresa says he wanted to marry her. Anyhow they’re very old friends, so of course he would be on her side.”
    “He oughtn’t to have a side.”
    Laura laughed.
    “Why, he couldn’t help it. He’s known her for simply ages. He’s fond of her—you can see he is. I’m horrid, but I’m not so horrid that I would expect him not to be fond of her, and not to try and get her what she wants. It’s all quite reasonable, you know. I can see that now I’ve stopped boiling. Tanis has been like her daughter—it’s quite natural she should want her to have the Priory. And as Mr. Metcalfe says, I couldn’t live there myself, because I’ve only got a hundred a year besides the rent Cousin Agnes pays me, and if she died nobody might want it, or if they did they mightn’t give me as much. It’s all quite reasonable.”
    “But you’re not going to sell?”
    “I don’t feel reasonable about it at all,” said Laura.
    He poured her out another cup of coffee. Then he said in a tentative voice,
    “You’re fond of the place?”
    She shook her head.
    “I’ve never seen it. There are photographs which belonged to my father—I used to get a sort of thrill from looking at them and thinking, ‘It doesn’t matter who lives there. It’s mine really—it belongs to me.’ And I used to plan what I would do with the rooms. Most of the furniture belongs to Cousin Agnes, but there are some old bits that have been there ever since the house was built. I used to plan curtains and chintzes, but of course it was just a game. Aunt Theresa always told me I couldn’t possibly live there unless I married someone with enough money to keep it up, and she always finished up by saying I wasn’t in the least likely to do that.”
    He looked up, began to laugh, and then was suddenly grave again.
    “Is she making you a good offer?”
    “Twelve thousand pounds. Mr. Metcalfe said it was very generous.”
    “It’s a fancy price. You know, you ought to go down and see the place. Can’t you do that?”
    “I couldn’t unless Cousin Agnes asked me.” She hesitated, and then came out with, “I think she’s going to.”
    “You’ll go?”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “Don’t be silly! Of course you must go! For one thing, it will smash this feud business, and for another, don’t you see, you may simply loathe the place, and then it’s too easy.”
    “Suppose I don’t loathe it—suppose I fall passionately in love with it?”
    “That’s quite easy too—you dig in your toes and wait for a handsome husband and three thousand a year.”
    “If he had three thousand a year he’d probably be hideous.”
    “Then you’d have to go on waiting.”
    She looked at him with the frank, confiding look he liked so much.
    “Do you know the Priory?