The Quiet Heart Read Online Free PDF

how badly, or otherwise, it contrasts with England,” he snubbed her quite deliberately this time. And then, as she tried to ignore faint prickles of annoyance that made her delicate skin feel as if it had been rubbed up the wrong way, a diversion was created by Jessamy making her appearance from the flower-room with a great stone vase of chrysanthemums that was plainly far too heavy for her to carry, and as a result of her awkward movements the water was slopping all over the place, one of the prize blooms was interfering with her vision by doing its best to poke her eye out; and when she suddenly realised that the gentleman for whom all this tremendous effort was being made had already returned to Leydon, and was in the hall, she uttered a nervous gasp and the stone vase crashed to the floor.
    Marianne, instead of going to her assistance, stood still and shook her head at her.
    “Alison will thank you for that!” she exclaimed. “She’ll have to clear up the mess!”
    But Charles Leydon, suddenly all concern, took a few quick strides across the hall and righted the stone vase for Jessamy. He went round gathering up the chrysanthemums and stuck them in the vase that was now depleted of its water content, and then assured Jessamy that accidents will happen and, in any case, the vase was far too heavy for her, and she shouldn’t have attempted to carry it. Someone else should have carried it for her—he shot an almost baleful glance at Marianne—and whatever she did in future she must not attempt to do anything of the kind again. With her unreliable foot she might have had a serious accident and hurt herself.
    Jessamy, nineteen and extremely impressionable, with a retentive memory and a head full of Scott, Tennyson, Keats and other lyrical writers of the same period, found herself simply gazing at him as she had done that morning. She recalled that she was the only one that morning who had received a kind word from him. And now, when he might have felt annoyed because of the mess on his great hall floor, he was being unbelievably nice.
    His curiously light blue eyes smiled at her. She noticed what very long and thick black eyelashes he had. and what a beautifully shaped chin and jaw he had. His nose was almost straight—Grecian, she thought—and his hairline was most attractive. The way his thick black hair, with a sheen like polished satin, grew back from it was intriguing and at the same time endearing. She wanted to put out a finger and touch it as he bent down and rescued yet another chrysanthemum.
    “I hope you don’t mind my getting all these flowers out of the gardener,” she said, in her soft, husky, breathless voice. “He’s a friend of mine.”
    “I’m not surprised.”
    This time his eyes smiled at her. She knew she would never quite forget the way he smiled at her. A sensation like anguish took possession of her. If only she wasn’t wearing quite such an old jumper and skirt, and a little of Marianne’s tinsel-like charm could replace the melancholy gloom of her great dark eyes, and the way she knew she smiled ... diffidently. For this one night at least!
    She wanted to be able to dazzle him with her charm, feel him recoil before the impact of it ... as Marianne’s young men recoiled before her charm. She wanted to be able to impress him, not with her Dresden-china fragility, her helplessness, her awkwardness, but with her vital, glowing beauty.
    A car came roaring up the drive, and Marianne rushed to the door and opened it. She slammed the door after her. Alison appeared in the gallery above them and looked down and sighed when she saw the watery mess that had to be cleaned up.
    Mrs. Davenport thrust her aside.
    “ I ’ll do it,” she said.

CHAPTER III
    THE dinner went off marvellously, considering the brief amount of time that Alison had had to prepare for it and devote to it. Her two helpers in the kitchen were both untrained girls who could prepare vegetables and wash up, but knew little