Read Palladian for Free Online Page B

Sophy’s lessons and bring it to my room at eleven?
    M.V.’
     
    Cassandra refolded the paper and was trembling a little. Aunt Tinty distributed her patent foods and watched Margaret intently. Margaret ate well and showed no signs of sickness.
    After breakfast, in the schoolroom, which the sun would not reach much before Sophy’s bedtime, they sat at the inky table and ruled lines on a large sheet of paper, headed it with the days of the week, and paused.
    In her basket, the cat snuffled. She seemed neither better nor worse, but ate nothing and scorned her milk.
    ‘History,’ Cassandra began. ‘What have you done?’
    ‘Oh, I had gone all through it once and got to Elizabeth for the second time,’ said Sophy airily.
    ‘Arithmetic?’
    ‘I was just doing those sums where there are figures on top of a line and some more underneath.’
    ‘Fractions?’
    ‘No, I don’t think that was the name.’
    ‘Do you know all your tables?’
    ‘I did once.’
    ‘Well … it looks like arithmetic every day. French?’ The child shrugged.
    ‘I can read
Les Malheurs de Sophie
. I had it for my birthday.’
    ‘Do you know any verbs?’
    ‘Yes, I think I
do.’
    ‘Write out the present tense of “être”. Can you do that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    She dipped her pen in the ink, considered, and wrote slanting across the page:
‘j’ êtres
tu êtres
il être
nous êtrons
vous êtrez
ils …’
    ‘All right!’ Cassandra interrupted. ‘I think French every day, too. It was a gallant try, though,’ she added.
    At one minute to eleven, she left Sophy to learn verbs by herself and set off along the corridor with the timetable. Lifts rose and fell in her stomach as she knocked, and when she heard the voice on the other side she opened the door andstepped out of the sunlit corridor into what seemed like darkness. She closed the door behind her and stood very still to get her bearings, and because she trembled violently.
    Strips of light and shadow slanted over the walls of the long room; at all the windows Venetian blinds were drawn. In the barred and chequered light only details stood out; white candles on a table, and flowers, scrolls of gilt on mirrors and furniture, and the light that filtered in was greenish, so that the ceiling had a green pallor and the marble fireplace reflected green and the man who leant his elbow on the mantelpiece had the same greenish tinge upon his face and hands.
    He came forward and greeted Cassandra and as she moved across the room towards him she grew accustomed to the shadows and glad of them.
    ‘You are trembling. Why?’ he asked, as he took the sheet of paper from her. ‘Come and sit down by the fire.’
    He drew up a chair opposite her and lifted an earthenware coffee-pot from the hearth and began to fill cups on a tray beside him. He handed her coffee and a cigarette and behind her little smoke-screen she could watch him studying the timetable, observed his thin face, his exaggeratedly long hands like the hands in an Elizabethan portrait, the greenish-gold hair, his rather affected clothes. She was hollowed by the fear of his cold, dissecting glance, the probability of calm sarcasm, of utter ruthlessness in conversation. He laid the paper aside without comment, as if it bored him, then leant back in his chair and laced his fingers together.
    ‘How are you going to get on with Sophy?’ he asked.
    ‘I hope … I think … I shall do my …’ she began to falter, in a little governessy voice.
    She knew that Jane Eyre had answered up better than that to her Mr Rochester. She looked into her empty coffee cup in panic and then, fearing lest he might take it as a hint, jerked upher chin and tried to glance at him. His voice, so far, had been gentle and even and his manner patient.
    ‘You have met my aunt who housekeeps for me. This is her home, but my cousin, her daughter, is here on a visit. She will be leaving soon.’
    Cassandra felt less able to speak than ever.
    ‘There is no period for