Such is love Read Free Page A

so well that nothing was suspected in the two months which followed her parents' return home. There were few things later than a.d. 150 which commanded her father's complete attention, in any case, and her mother was always primarily concerned with her own immediate affairs.
    It had been a week after Aunt Eleanor's departure that the growing suspicion in Gwyneth's mind took on a horrible certainty. Aunt Eleanor might have planned magnificently. Gwyneth herself might have acted splendidly. But concealment was, after all, an impossibility. Those weeks with Terry were not to slip into the gulf of time, leaving no trace behind. Gvi^neth was going to have his child.
    Even now, she could remember the fearful, clammy chill which settled on her as she admitted the truth to herself. It had been almost like looking death in the face. She had sat here on the side of her bed, slowly rubbing the palms of her hands together in a sort of subconscious effort to bring some warmth to her chilled being.
    She had thought disjointedly of suicide, of running away —only that was too much hke the flight with Terry—of day-to-day concealment and deception. And then she had known suddenly that she could not possibly face any of those. There was one course, and one course only. With a

    determination which even now surprised her when she thought of it, she had gone to her mother and told her the whole story.
    This time there was no stammering, no half-whispered confession, as there had been with Aunt Eleanor. Just a cold, bald recital of the facts. Gwyneth had not only grown up in those last few weeks. She had grown hard— with a sort of desperate, weary hardness which meant that somehow the spring was broken.
    Mother's reception of the story had been characteristic. Like Aunt Eleanor, she, too, said at once: "Your father must not know." But she didn't add anything about breaking his heart, because Mother never concerned herself with anything like that. She said:
    "We couldn't possibly keep it quiet if he knew."
    That, to her, was the important point. And by a different path, she arrived at conclusions identical with Aunt Eleanor's.
    The ethics of the case commanded only a fraction of her attention, but the offence against common sense made her coldly furious.
    "What sort of judgment have you got, you little fool,'* she had asked in that soft, beautiful voice of hers, "to go running about the countryside with a penniless bounder who was afraid even to face your parents? Didn't even that give you some hint to keep away from register offices and cheap hotels with him?"
    Gwyneth had had no answer ready for that, and her mother had not expected any. She was prepared to find the answers to the problems confronting them. And she did find them all.
    Canon Vilner was told—with a wealth of convincing detail—that his daughter was run down and must have a long rest in the quiet Highland retreat which was Aunt Eleanor's home. For a man who believed he actively sought after truth, he accepted the lie with rather pathetic readiness, Gwyneth thought. And, with very little delay, she had been packed off North, to spend the waiting months with Aunt Eleanor.
    Aunt Eleanor had rented a cottage even more remote from civilization than her own home, and, as her sole attendant, she engaged an elderly woman who had once

    been a district nurse, but who had long ago been forced by deafness to give up her occupation.
    And with only this strange, silent woman and Aunt Eleanor for company, Gwyneth had spent the months waiting for her baby's arrival. All the time
    "Miss Vilner." There was a knock at the door, and with an almost physical start, Gwyneth came back from her memories of sombre Highland glens to the warm sunshine of her own bedroom.
    "Yes, Cranston?"
    "Madam said for you not to forget that you are taking the car to meet the five-twenty. It's five to five now."
    "All right. Thank you, Cranston."
    The five-twenty—and Aunt Eleanor. She would have to hurry. She