Talk of the Town Read Free Page A

village, so I stopped.”
    “I shouldn’t bother to start till my life got a little more interesting, if I were you, for there’s nothing makes one so peevish as reading a book where nothing happens."
    “Nothing of the sort you have been describing is likely to happen in my life, Auntie.”
    “Never say never. It is something I learned long ago. I used to say I’d never hold up my head again when Standington walked out on me, and never be poor again when I married Mr. Eglinton, and never marry again when he died. But all my nevers came back to taunt me, and now I hardly ever say it, for I shan’t even say I never say never. It is, perhaps, unlikely I shall remarry and be rich again, but there—who is to say? But as to yourself, the case is quite different. You are young and attractive and in London. Oh, I know I can’t present you as I should dearly love to do, my dear, but there are gentlemen with eyes in their heads for all that, and I had not been presented yet when Standington saw me, looking in at a shop window, and followed me. He was so clever. He came to the door not five minutes after I got home and said he’d seen me drop a trinket—a watch fob it was— and followed me home to return it. I’d never seen it before in my life. How should I, for he took it from his own chain for the purpose, and it served as an introduction. Before long he was calling every day. What a handsome man he was—so straight and with shoulders as wide as a door.” The blue eyes took on their glazed “memory” look.
    Daphne was already beginning to have some understanding of her aunt. Of all her husbands, it was only the first who brought this certain smile to her lips. He was the great love of her life—no doubt of that. Her fondest and most frequent memories were of her life in England with him, and they were only married for eighteen months. Even the divorce had not soured those memories. Daphne was curious to have a look at the memoirs. “Did you write that episode up in your memoirs, Aunt? It seems to me from that date on your life was interesting enough to record.”
    “It was interesting enough a month before that. I started it the day I came to London to visit the Elders. That was their name, not age. Relatives on Papa’s side. Yes, there was a very interesting month even before Standington wangled his introduction. You must have a look at my diary one day, if you can read my scratching. I haven’t kept it since I married Mr. Pealing, but now that you are come, I think I’ll start it again, for with such an attractive young lady in the house, I have a feeling things will pick up. I am very good at feelings.”
    She was off on another tale having to do with a premonition that Lord Alvanley would escape unscathed from a duel with Morgan O’Connell, as indeed he had. “And now I have the feeling that things are going to start to happen again. It’s hard to describe what I mean. The blood quickens and there’s a feeling of excitement inside my head. Mary would know what I meant. She used to get feelings, too.”
    “I hope you may be right, Ma’am,” Daphne said, with the secret thought that her aunt’s manifestations of feeling might be due to Mr. Fox’s excellent wine.
    “Oh, I am never wrong about my feelings.”
    “What, never?” her niece teased.
    “Hardly ever,” Effie corrected herself, and together they went off to their chambers.
     

Chapter 3
     
    Aunt Effie’s premonition of great things about to happen did not come to pass immediately. Nothing occurred during the first three days of the visit. The lavish dinner of the first evening was not repeated, and Daphne soon learned that her aunt kept no carriage. “Actually I have a carriage,” Effie told her, “but I don’t keep horses. In the first place, they charge extra for the stable that goes with the apartment, and in the second place, it requires a groom and such a ton of feed, for horses do nothing but eat their heads off all the time