Love and the Loathsome Leopard Read Free Page B

back into the past, he went in through the open door.
    To his astonishment there was not the dirt and desolation he had expected.
    He had thought to find The Hall thick with cobwebs, pictures fallen from the walls, the carpets grey with dust, but instead everything was clean.
    Lord Cheriton looked round in surprise.
    The oak furniture even seemed to have been polished and there was a bowl of roses on the table at the bottom of the stairs where he remembered that callers, and there were few enough of them, would leave visiting-cards which his father never read.
    Pensively he walked towards the door of a room which in his mother’s time had been her drawing room.
    It was the only room in the house which he could ever think of with tolerance. The library where he had been whipped had been a dark purgatory of pain, the dining room where his father had ranted through every meal was a place of terror.
    He opened the door and stood for a moment speechless, staring about him as if he was dreaming.
    The room was full of sunlight and for a moment nothing seemed to have changed from the way he remembered it since he was a child. Then he realised that the curtains were very faded but had been patched and mended skilfully.
    The sofas also had mellowed and the softness of their colour reminded him of the bricks of the house itself. Their covers too had been repaired.
    The furniture shone and there were flowers everywhere – roses, honey-suckle, blue delphiniums, and even lilies, such as had always been grown in the greenhouses for the altar of the small grey Church his mother had attended on Sundays.
    ‘It’s incredible! Unbelievable!’ he said to himself.
    He had thought he would find a ruin, not this.
    As Lord Cheriton stood just inside the door, his eyes taking in every detail of the room, someone came through the open window and with her back to the sunshine it seemed as if her head was haloed in light.
    He did not move and for a moment the woman who had entered did not see him.
    She was carrying still more flowers in her arms, white roses, and she looked down at them so that he could see the darkness of her long eyelashes against the clearness of her skin.
    Then, as if she sensed that she was not alone, she looked up, and her eyes seemed to fill her whole face as she gave a startled exclamation.
    “Forgive me,” Lord Cheriton said, “but the door was open and I understood the house was empty.”
    “Who – who told you it was – empty?”
    There was a little tremor in her voice that was almost one of fear.
    “I had no idea anyone was living here.”
    “Why should you – expect there would–not be?”
    “This house is called Larks Hall?”
    “Yes – that is – right.”
    “And it belongs, I think, to Lord Cheriton?”
    “Yes, but he never comes here and we heard, although it may not be true, that he wished the house to – fall down.”
    There was silence, then Lord Cheriton said,
    “I am, as it happens, acquainted with the owner.”
    “You know him?”
    The words were almost a cry and now the girl, for she was little more, put the roses down on an adjacent table almost as if they had become too heavy for her to carry.
    “Yes, I know him,” Lord Cheriton said carefully.
    “He is not – thinking of – coming here?”
    There was no mistaking now that there was an expression of fear in the blue eyes and that there was a note almost of horror in the young voice.
    “I don’t think so,” Lord Cheriton replied, “but why should that perturb you?”
    The girl looked away from him and he saw that she was clasping and unclasping her fingers in an agitated way.
    “Do you intend to – tell him that you have – been here?”
    “Is there any reason why I should not?”
    “Every reason.”
    “I don’t think I understand.”
    She made a little gesture of helplessness.
    Then she looked at him gravely, searching his face as if considering whether he was trustworthy and she could confide in him.
    “May I say,” Lord