The Glittering Lights (Bantam Series No. 12) Read Online Free PDF Page A

call the middle of the night’.”
    “And do not worry your mother,” Sir James admonished. “You know she is rather anxious when you go to London without me.”
    “I am sure Mama will want me to look my very best when the Duke arrives,” Cassandra said demurely. “Like every woman you have ever known, Papa, I literally have not a thing to wear!”
    Sir James laughed at that and walking across the room went through the Hall and into his Study.
    He sat down at the desk and wrote a short note in his strong, upright handwriting and put it into an envelope.
    Sir James addressed it to: “Mrs. Langtry, The Prince’s Theatre.”
    “Thank you, dear Papa,” Cassandra said and bending, kissed his cheek.
    She slipped the letter inside the bodice of her dress before she went to her mother’s bed-room.
    She said good-night to Lady Alice, told her that she was about to go to London, and found, as she expected, that her mother apparently understood her need for more clothes.
    It was Hannah who protested when Cassandra, going to her bedroom found her there waiting to help her undress.
    “Really, Miss Cassandra, you might give me a little more notice,” she scolded. “How do you think I’m going to get ready by eight o’clock tomorrow morning unless I stay up all night?”
    “You know you never go to sleep early,” Cassandra replied, “and it is important, Hannah, it is, really, or I would not have made up my mind so unexpectedly.”
    “Are you up to some of your monkey tricks again?” Hannah asked. “Because if you are, you can take someone else with you. I shall not be responsible to Her Ladyship, and that’s a fact!”
    Cassandra paid no attention.
    She had heard Hannah talk like this far too many times before to be taken seriously.
    “I’ll go and start packing,” Hannah said when finally Cassandra was ready for bed. “It’ll take me three hours. If I’m too exhausted to come with you in the morning, you’ll understand what has happened.”
    “I have already told you, Hannah,” Cassandra said, “I only want a few gowns, so do not pack half the wardrobe. I shall only be staying two or three days and I shall be shopping all the time.”
    “I can’t think where we’re going to put any more things. There’s no room for what we have already,” Hannah remarked as a parting shot.
    As soon as she was alone, Cassandra jumped out of bed and put on the silk wrap which Hannah had left lying over a chair.
    She tied the sash around her small waist and went from the bedroom into her Sitting-Room which adjoined it.
    It was a lovely room and had been done up only two years ago by her father who had spared no expense.
    Everything that Cassandra treasured, everything that meant something special to her was housed here in the room that was essentially her own.
    She lit the lamp which had been turned out by Hannah before she left and found a key in its secret drawer which was indiscernible to anyone who did not know where it was concealed.
    With it she opened the lower drawer of her desk in which reposed two large green leather Albums.
    She took one out and put it on the table beside the lighted lamp.
    For a moment she stared at it as if she was half-afraid to turn the cover with its silver edges and reveal what lay inside.
    Then very slowly, with a strange expression on her face, she opened the Album.

CHAPTER TWO
    Cassandra turned the pages.
    On every one there were portrait-sketches, cuttings from newspapers and magazines, all referring to the Marquis of Charlbury.
    She had started to collect newspaper reports of him after she had seen him at the Eton and Harrow Match. There had been quite glowing descriptions of the way he himself had batted and how expertly he had captained his team.
    Cassandra had cut them out of the many newspapers her father read and from the Illustrated London News , the Sporting and Dramatic, and the magazines like The Lady which amused her mother.
    Later she thought she had done it