The Young Nightingales Read Online Free PDF

favourite chair and make herself comfortable for a ‘heart - to-heart’ before retiring for the night, and dashing off to London again in the morning. “Darling—” Irina hesitated, lighting a cigarette thoughtfully—“you know we’re all expecting you and Roger to get married, and now that Daddy’s dead you’ll probably think it a good idea to get married almost immediately. After all, you need a home of your own, and someone to look after you. Conway thinks it’s a good idea that you should marry Roger quickly, and if you want to do so without any fuss and with none of us looking on we shall all understand perfectly ... Or Con and I will !”
    Jane answered mechanically:
    “Thanks.”
    Irina looked at her expectantly.
    “Well?”
    “Roger hasn’t asked me to marry him yet,” Jane said in the same unnatural voice.
    “No, but he will.”
    “We’re just good friends.” The tight, mirthless smile on Jane’s lips startled her sister.
    “Don’t be silly,” she said impatiently. “It’s been obvious for ages that he’s in love with you ... ” And then her slim brows contracted and she plainly recollected something. “By the way,” she said, “is he staying the night?”
    “Yes.”
    “And at the moment he’s downstairs with Miranda?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is it true that he went to Nice and brought her back home?”
    “Yes.”
    “I—I see,” Irina said, very slowly and with abruptly widening eyes. “Then you think that she—?”
    “I know that, for the moment at any rate, he’s very much concerned with Miranda. He told me so himself this afternoon.”
    Irina frowned quite blackly—for her—and went across to the bed and spoke firmly to the other girl.
    “Now listen to me, my child,” she said, seating herself on the foot of the bed. “We all know what Miranda is and of what she is capable—given the chance. Daddy made an ass of himself over her, and you and I have never trusted her from the moment she came to live here. If she’s taken a fancy to Roger you mustn’t let her have him ... After all, men are easily bowled over and they never b elieve the worst of a pretty woman, so for his sake as well as your own nip the affair in the bud if it seems like developing. Roger’s your property, and you’re practically engaged to him. He wouldn’t even thank you himself if you let Miranda, who is death to any : man once she really gets her hooks into him, carry him off in triumph under your eyes and wreck the whole of his future life. So for goodness’ sake, Jane, be sensible—”
    “I am sensible,” Jane assured her, blinking at the softly shaded light above her head and wishing her sister would go away so that she could put it out, “and I mean to be very, very sensible in future—the immediate future. I’ve decided that I wouldn’t marry Roger now under any circumstances !”
    Irina was aghast.
    “But you love him—”
    “I don’t. At the moment I’m not capable of loving anybody.”
    “That’s because you’re so upset about Father.”
    “Father wouldn’t wish me to marry Roger now—I know that. He’d realise that it was not intended after all. I have other things to do with my life, and marrying Roger isn’t one of them. As a matter of fact,” she added almost complacently, although she wasn’t feeling in the least complacent, “I have decided to accept a job Roger himself has offered me—a job with his aunt.”
    “A job with his aunt?” Irina echoed. “If he has an aunt alive she must be terribly old. Where does she live?”
    “In Switzerland.”
    Irina collapsed once more on to the foot of the bed.
    “You’re joking,” she said.
    But Jane managed finally to convince her that she was not.
    “I’ve always wanted to go to Switzerland,” she said, still blinking in a mesmerised fashion at the light and wondering vaguely why it was that so far not one of her holidays had taken her to Switzerland. She and her father and the rest of the family had been to