Scales of Justice Read Free Page B

colloquialisms… a little girl shutting her eyes and firing off a pop-gun. All right; your father likes to have you about. So he well might and so he still would if we married. We’d probably live half our time at Nunspardon.”
    “It’s much more than that.” Rose hesitated. She had drawn away from him and sat with her hands pressed together between her knees. She wore a long house-dress. Her hair was drawn back into a knot at the base of her neck, but a single fine strand had escaped and shone on her forehead. She used very little make-up and could afford this economy for she was a beautiful girl.
    She said, “It’s simply that his second marriage hasn’t been a success. If I left him now he’d really and truly have nothing to live for. Really.”
    “Nonsense,” Mark said uneasily.
    “He’s never been able to do without me. Even when I was little. Nanny and I and my governess all following the drum. So many countries and journeys. And then after the war when he was given all those special jobs-Vienna and Rome and Paris. I never went to school, because he hated the idea of separation.”
    “All wrong, of course. Only half a life.”
    “No, no, no, that’s not true, honestly. It was a wonderfully rich life. I saw and heard and learnt all sorts of splendid things other girls miss.”
    “All the same…”
    “No, honestly, it was grand.”
    “You should have been allowed to get under your own steam.”
    “It wasn’t a case of being allowed! I was allowed almost anything I wanted. And when I did get under my own steam just see what happened! He was sent with that mission to Singapore and I stayed in Grenoble and took a course at the university. He was delayed and delayed… and I found out afterwards that he was wretchedly at a loose end. And then… it was while he was there… he met Kitty.”
    Lacklander closed his well-kept doctor’s hand over the lower half of his face and behind it made an indeterminate sound.
    “Well,” Rose said, “it turned out as badly as it possibly could, and it goes on getting worse, and if I’d been there I don’t think it would have happened.”
    “Why not? He’d have been just as likely to meet her. And even if he hadn’t, my heavenly and darling Rose, you cannot be allowed to think of yourself as a twister of the tail of fate.”
    “If I’d been there…”
    “Now
look
here!” said Lacklander. “Look at it like this. If you removed yourself to Nunspardon as my wife, he and your stepmother might get together in a quick come-back.”
    “O, no,” Rose said. “No, Mark. There’s not a chance of that.”
    “How do you know? Listen. We’re in love. I love you so desperately much it’s almost more than I can endure. I know I shall never meet anybody else who could make me so happy and, incredible though it may seem, I don’t believe you will either. I won’t be put off, Rose. You shall marry me and if your father’s life here is too unsatisfactory, well, we’ll find some way of improving it. Perhaps if they part company he could come to us.”
    “Never! Don’t you see! He couldn’t bear it. He’d feel sort of extraneous.”
    “I’m going to talk to him. I shall tell him I want to marry you.”
    “No, Mark, darling! No… please…”
    His hand closed momentarily over hers. Then he was on his feet and had taken up the basket of roses. “Good evening, Mrs. Cartarette,” he said. “We’re robbing your garden for my grandmother. You’re very much ahead of us at Hammer with your roses.”
    Kitty Cartarette had turned in by the green archway and was looking thoughtfully at them.
    The second Mrs. Cartarette did not match her Edwardian name. She did not look like a Kitty. She was so fair that without her make-up she would have seemed bleached. Her figure was well disciplined and her face had been skilfully drawn up into a beautifully cared-for mask. Her greatest asset was her acquired inscrutability. This, of itself, made a
femme fatale
of Kitty