(1941) Up at the Villa Read Free Page B

listening to the civil
remarks he was making to her with a cold look of disapproval. The worst of it
was , the Teller wasn't an adventurer or anything like
that; in fact, he was a cousin of his wife's; so far as family went he was as
good as anybody and he had quite a decent income. The mistake was that he'd
never had to earn his living. Oh. well , every family
had its black sheep, but what the Colonel couldn't understand was what the
women saw in him. He couldn't be expected to know, this simple, honest Englishman, that what Rowley Flint had which explained
everything was sex appeal, and the fact that in his relations with women he was
unreliable and unscrupulous seemed only to make him more irresistible. However
prejudiced she might be against him, he had only to be with a woman for half an
hour for her heart to melt, and soon she would be saying to herself that she
didn't believe half the things that were said against him. But if she had been
asked what it was she saw in him she would have found it hard to answer. He
certainly wasn't very good-looking, there was even no distinction in his
appearance, he looked like any mechanic in a garage; he wore his smart clothes
as if they were overalls, but as if he didn't care a hang what he looked like.
It was exasperating that he seemed to be serious about nothing, not even about
making love; he made it quite clear that there was only one thing that he
wanted from a woman, and his complete lack of sentimentality was intolerably
offensive. But there was something that swept you off your feet, a sort of gentleness
behind the roughness of his manner, a thrilling warmth
behind his mockery, some instinctive understanding of woman as a different
creature from man, which was strangely flattering; and the sensuality of his
mouth and the caress in his grey eyes. The old Princess had put the matter with
her usual crudity:
    `Of course he's a bad lot, a thorough wrong 'un, but if I
were thirty years younger and he asked me to run away with him I wouldn't
hesitate for a moment even though I knew he'd chuck me in a week and I'd be
wretched for the rest of my life.’
    But the Princess liked general conversation at her table
and when her guests were settled down she addressed Mary.
    `I'm so sorry Sir Edgar was unable to come tonight’
    `He was sorry, too. He had to go to Cannes! The Princess
took the rest of the party in.
    `It's a great secret, so you mustn't any of you tell
anybody, but he's just been made Governor of Bengal.’
    `Has he, by Jove!' cried the Colonel `A damned nice job
to get’
    `Did it come as a surprise?”
    ‘He knew he was one of the people who were being
considered,' said Mary.
    `He'll be the right man in the right place; there's no
doubt about that,' said the Colonel.
    `If he pulls it off, I shouldn't be surprised if later on
they didn't make him Viceroy.’
    `I can't imagine anything I'd like better than to be
Vicereine of India,' said the Princess.
    `Why don't you marry him on the off-chance?' smiled Mary.
    `Oh, isn't he married?' asked Lady Grace.
    `No.’
    The Princess gave Mary a shrewd, malicious look.
    `I won't conceal from you that he's been flirting with me
outrageously during the six weeks he's been here.’
    Rowley chuckled and from beneath his long eyelashes threw
a sidelong glance at Mary.
    `Have you decided to marry him, Princess? Because if you
have, I don't think he's got much chance, poor blighter.’
    `I think it would be a very suitable alliance,' said
Mary. She knew quite well that both the Princess and Rowley were chaffing her,
but she had no intention of giving anything away. Edgar Swift had made it
sufficiently plain to his friends and hers in Florence that he was in love with
her; and the Princess had more than once tried to find out from her whether
anything was going to come of it `I don't know whether you'd much like the
climate of Calcutta,' said Lady Grace, who took everything with complete