The Reluctant Widow Read Online Free PDF

of Feldenhall to pursue the calling of a governess, whatever her father’s misfortunes may have been.”
    “My dear sir, I have not a penny in the world but what I have earned!” she said tartly. “I can readily believe it, but you are not, I fancy, without relatives.”
    “Again you are correct! But I am the oddest creature! If I must be a drudge, as you have described me, I prefer to receive a wage for my labors!”
    “You are certainly unlucky in your relatives,” he commented.
    “Well,” she said candidly, “I cannot quite blame them, after all. It is no light matter to have a penniless girl foisted onto one, I am sure. And one, moreover, to whose name a disagreeable stigma is attached. You yourself know something of what it means to be whispered about. You should be able to understand my resolve not to cause either my relatives or my friends embarrassment. You will say that I might have called myself by some other name! I might perhaps have done so had I had less pride.”
    “I should not say any such thing,” he answered calmly. “I will agree, however, that you have a great deal of pride—and some of it false.”
    “False!” she exclaimed, quite taken aback.
    “Certainly. It has led you to exaggerate the consequences of your father’s death.” “You cannot know the circumstances that led to it,” she said in a low voice. “On the contrary. But I have yet to learn that you were in any way concerned in them.” “Perhaps you are right, and I have allowed myself to be too much mortified. My first experience of how the world must look upon our affairs was an unhappy one. You must know that I was betrothed to a certain gentleman at the time of my father’s death who—who was excessively relieved to be released from his obligations.” She lifted her chin, adding, “Not that I cared a button for that, I assure you!”
    He remained entirely unmoved. “How should you, indeed?”
    She would have spurned any expression of pity, but she felt irrationally annoyed by this unfeeling response, and said rather sharply, “Well, it is no very pleasant thing to be jilted, after all!”
    “Very true, but the knowledge that you were well rid of a bad bargain must soon have allayed your chagrin, I imagine.”
    A reluctant twinkle came into her eye. “I have not the most distant guess, my lord, why the extreme good sense of your remarks should put me out of charity with you, but so it is!” she said. “You will do well to conduct me to your decent inn before I am provoked into answering you in a style quite unsuited to our different degrees!”
    He smiled. “Why, I am sorry if I have vexed you, Miss Rochdale. But I cannot conceive that
    expressions of sympathy on my part could in any way benefit you, or, in fact, be acceptable to you.”
    She began to draw on her gloves. “How odious it is in you always to be so precisely right! Do your friends in general feel themselves to be remarkably foolish when they are with you?”
    “As I am fortunate in having a good many friends, I believe not,” he replied gravely. She laughed, and rose to her feet. As she did so, a bell pealed vigorously, as though pulled by a very urgent hand. It startled her, and she turned her eyes toward Carlyon in a look of dismayed inquiry. He had risen when she did, and he moved toward the door, saying, “That is doubtless my cousin. You will not wish to meet him. Do not be alarmed! I will not let him come into this room.”
    “It is his own house, after all!” she said, amused. “I suppose he will not eat me!” “Unlikely, I think. But he will probably be drunk, and I should be loath to subject you to any more annoyance than you have already suffered.”
    The servant must have been nearer at hand than either of them knew, for before Carlyon could reach the door voices were heard in the hall, a hasty footstep sounded, and a tall, slender young gentleman fairly burst into the room, exclaiming in accents of heartfelt relief, “Oh,