Such is love Read Free Page B

couldn't indulge in memories any longer. And who wanted to, anyway? What was the good—^what was the good? It was all past and done with. Why could she never persuade herself to believe that? Mother believed it —even Aunt Eleanor believed it. They had made it so, themselves. The past was dead.
    Gwyneth reached for her powder blue coat and tied a blue scarf over her hair. She scarcely glanced at herself in the mirror—at the sUm, sophisticated, faintly enigmatic creature who had made Evander Onslie suddenly decide that women had a place in his life after all—even if he were a powerful, cool-thinking steel magnate.
    So different, so indescribably different, from the girl who had captured Terry Muirkirk's wandering fancy more than six- years ago. Still the same soft brown hair with 'sunshine caught in it', still the wide-set blue eyes that darkened or lightened with every change of mood, still the faintly golden bloom on her skin and the touch of colour where her cheeks hoUowed slightly under the wide cheekbones. But the mouth was different. That was what changed her so much. No longer was it soft and pliant, ready to curve upwards in the half-placatory smile of her girlhood. It was cool and firm and very faintly hard, and often when Gwyneth smiled now, an observer might have wondered a little uneasily just what knowledge lay behind that smile.
    She went out of the room and down the wide, sunny staircase. Outside the open front door stood her own little dark blue sports car, and getting into the car, she glanced

    up at the windows of the house to see if her mother were watching. There was no sign of her, but that did not banish the queer feeling Gwyneth always had that her mother did watch her, and the faint, involuntary shrug which she gave was really her assurance to herself that she didn't care anyway.
    The dark blue car shot down the drive, slowed at the gate as it turned into the country road, and then stopped altogether. At the same moment a tall figure in grey flannels crossed from the footpath and came to a standstill beside her.
    "HeUo, Van."
    "Hello, my dear. Where are you off to now?*'
    "Only to the station to meet Aunt Eleanor."
    "And Aunt Eleanor is the grim lady from the Highlands, isn't she? I thought she was not coming to our wedding."
    "She wasn't, but now she is. First thoughts were best, but it can't be helped." Gwyneth smiled up at her fiance as he towered above her.
    At seventeen, she would have been awed and possibly repelled by Evander Onslie. At twenty-three, she found him so disturbingly dear that sometimes she was half afraid, because he meant so much to her.
    She loved the slight smile that often softened his very firm mouth when he looked at her. She loved his tall figure and his dark hair, slightly greying at the temples. She knew that other people were a good deal afraid of those direct, uncompromising dark eyes, and the stem, often abrupt manner. But, oddly enough, she was not. There was something clear-cut and astringent about everything he did and said, and that in itself gave her a sense of security.
    "I'm sorry about the aunt," he said with that slight smile. "That is, if she really vexes you. But it would take more than an aunt to spoil Thursday, I think."
    Gwyneth laughed, and Aunt Eleanor immediately became less menacing.
    "She doesn't matter, really. Were you going up to the house. Van?"
    "Yes. I wanted to see your father about one or two things."
    "He's not in, I'm afraid."

    "Not? Then I'll come in later and see him just before dinner."
    "Yes, do. I must go now or I shall be keeping Aunt Eleanor waiting, and that's the eighth deadly sin."
    Gwyneth pressed the self-starter and tossed him a farewell smile.
    "See you in an hour or two." And the car was off down the road once more.
    She was terribly glad she had seen him. Somehow it took the sting out of all the dreadful memories which Aunt* Eleanor's coming had evoked. He represented her new world, her absolutely fresh beginning. The