These Delights Read Free Page B

father who has to go into a sanatorium. What else could they do but come here in the circumstances?”
    She was silent, having no answer. Luke was right, she supposed. Viewed in that light there was no other alternative, and she was not his wife yet to dispute his decisions.
    He looked at her leaning against the pillar, her tall, well-made body taut with her unreasoning reluctance to give in, and he asked with gentle surprise:
    “Don’t you like children, Diana?”
    She saw that for him his question held importance, that he was one of those men who probably took it for granted that all women liked children, but she had never dissembled with him.
    “No,” she said clearly, “I don’t I think they are opinionated and tiresome, and I don’t understand them.”
    His clean-shaven lips twitched slightly.
    “Well, that’s honest, anyway.”
    “Oh, I suppose one’s own are different—at least everyone tells me that,” she said hastily, not wishing to give him a wrong impression. She had every intention of doing her duty by Luke within reason.
    He smiled then.
    “You’re a queer girl,” he said. “I wonder if I’ ll ever understand you.”
    She made a small, apologetic movement towards him.
    “I’m quite easy to understand, Luke,” she said, “if you’ll only see things my way.”
    “Aren’t we all?” he retorted with humor.
    She smiled reluctantly.
    “Yes, I suppose so. And your mind’s quite made up about the Jordan children?”
    “Quite.” He looked surprised . “I thought you understood.”
    “Yes,” she said, and sighed. “Yes, I suppose I do — Luke”—she bent and kissed him, a rare demonstration from her— “ you won’t let them make any difference, will you?”
    He caught her hand and held it.
    “Of course not, you silly goose. But it’s nice to know that rather alarming armour of yours isn’t foolproof, all the same.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It makes you more vulnerable and like the rest of us,” he teased, and got to his feet, knocking out his pipe on the flags. “Come and have a lo ok at those heifers I bought at Tavistock the other day. They’re looking much better.”
    As they walked round the farm together, she recovered her usual cool assurance. She was keenly interested in everything to do with livestock, talking knowledgeably to Tom Bowden about feeding, market prices, and the all-important question of breeding, while Luke listened, admiring her ready grasp of such matters. She got her efficiency and drive from her mother, but, he hoped, not all that indefatigable matron’s urge for organisation. L ady Sale, having at length failed to push her kindly husband out of his pleasant rut, bent her energies on everyone and everything which came within her grasp.
    Diana said she must be going, and the foreman watched them walk towards the stables in the sunlight. A fine couple, he thought, viewing Diana’s straight back as she linked an arm in Luke’s, but she’ll wear the trousers in his house if she can. Shaking his head, he went away to feed the pigs.
    Mounted again, Diana bent from her saddle and gently touched Luke’s cheek with her whip.
    “Thank you for my nice lunch,” she said.
    Luke observed Diana’s black gelding with an appreciative eye. “Comet looks well. Are you going to show him this year?”
    “I hope so,” she said. “He ought to do well in hack classes if I can teach him some ring manners.”
    “You will,” he assured her, and indeed he knew she would, and win with the horse as well. She rode superbly and was as good a show-woman as he had seen in the west country. “I always think of you on a horse,” he told her. “Your name suits you well—Diana the huntress.”
    That pleased her, for she was proud of her horsemanship. “I’m going back by the moor,” she said. “Why don’t you saddle Goldfinch and ride with me?”
    “I’ve got work to do.” He laughed.
    “Nonsense!” Her voice was imperious at first, then as suddenly