The Stars of San Cecilio Read Online Free PDF Page A

works of art, but she thought she recognized a Tintoretto in the library, and there was an exquisite Greek bronze on a pedestal that aroused all her admiration.
    Dr. Fernandez watched her looking about her in a slightly awed fashion, and explained:
    ‘ This house belongs to a friend of mine, and actually I have already agreed to take it for a period of at least a year. It will be left exactly as it is, and there is a housekeeper to look after the place, and her husband attends to the outside. At the moment they are on holiday, but they can be recalled almost immediately. Could you move in here in a couple of days?’
    Lisa looked a little surprised, and then answered:
    ‘Yes, of course.’ She hesitated a moment, and then asked: ‘Will Miss Grimthorpe be coming here, too?’
    ‘No, I have decided to pay her a month’s wages and send her back to England. Her accent is not good, and Gia is too old, I think, for a nurse now. She must learn to look after herself more, and you will act the part of a governess-companion to her. ’
    ‘I see,’ Lisa said.
    Actually she was thinking—So that was how he did it! Just sent people about their business, when he no longer had any use for them, and paid them a month’s salary to salve any hurt feelings!... Was that what would happen to her one day?
    She felt that he was watching her rather closely, in the dimness of the hall.
    ‘You think that you will be lonely? Just you and Gia?’ ‘Oh, no,’ she denied instantly. ‘And there will be the housekeeper and her husband. ’
    ‘Precisely. And I shall come here myself sometimes — and perhaps bring friends. ’
    ‘I see,’ she said again.
    They passed out from the dimness into the vivid tangle of the garden, and Lisa thought that although it really was rather a wilderness
    — proof, perhaps, that the housekeeper’s husband was old — it was the most beautiful wilderness she had ever seen. There were roses so huge and so darkly exotic that she seldom remembered seeing any like them before, and the high white walls were overhung by pale mauve growth like clematis, and starry jasmine flowers. There were green tunnels of cypress, almond and orange trees, crazy-paved walks, and a huge patio on to which the main rooms opened, and where the light would linger after the sun had gone down. There was also a way down to the beach, which Julio Fernandez pointed out to her, smiling in the way that suddenly lighted up his dark face when he
    suggested that she might teach Gianetta to swim.
    ‘That is, of course, if you swim yourself,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, I do,’ she answered.
    He glanced at her for an instant, and perhaps in that instant he saw her denuded of her crisp linen dress and clothed only in a brief swim-suit, her almost childishly slender figure tanned to gold by the kiss of his Spanish sun. Then he looked away, and presently he wandered away by himself, and Gia and Lisa wandered alone in the Sleeping-Beauty wilderness.
    Gia’s eyes were not too certain as she gazed about her. ‘Will it not seem strange,’ she suggested, ‘just the two of us in this big house, and my Papa not here?’
    ‘But he will come sometimes,’ Lisa reminded her. ‘You heard him say so.’
    ‘Yes.’ But Gia sighed unexpectedly. ‘And he will bring friends. That means he will bring Dona de Camponelli! ’ Lisa looked at her for explanation.
    ‘And who is she?’ she asked, while her heart missed a beat.
    Gia looked up at her with her greenish-hazel eyes full of an unchildlike but very definite displeasure.
    ‘Dona Beatriz de Camponelli—someone who Grimmie says will marry my papa! In Madrid she comes to see us often, and once here she came to see Papa. She is beautiful, like my mama, who was gathered to the Holy Angels when I was born. She and my mama were cousins, but I do not like her, although I would have liked very much to have known my mama! ’
    Something in the plaintive voice, and the sigh that followed the words, touched Lisa