Read Victoria Holt for Free Online Page B

I could ask if it would be correct for me to call. I passed the Manor. It is a fine old place.”
    “You should have come in.”
    “First of all I wanted to find out whether your aunt would receive me.”
    “But of course she would be delighted to receive you.”
    “After all,” he went on, “we have not been formally introduced.”
    “We have met four times, if you count the time on the train.”
    “Yes,” he said slowly, “I feel we are old friends. Your welcome home was very warm I gather.”
    “Aunt Patty is such a darling.”
    “She is clearly devoted to you.”
    “Yes.”
    “So it was the happiest of homecomings?”
    I hesitated.
    “Not?” he asked.
    I was silent for a few seconds and he looked at me with some concern. Then he said: “Shall we walk through the forest? I think it rather beautiful at this time of year. The trees without their leaves are so beautiful, don’t you think? Look at the pattern that one makes against the sky.”
    “Yes, I have always thought so. More beautiful in winter even than in summer. This is hardly what you call a forest. It’s more of a wood…just clumps of trees which don’t extend for more than a quarter of a mile.”
    “Nevertheless let us walk among the beautiful trees and you can tell me why your homecoming was not as usual.”
    Still I hesitated and he looked at me with a slight reproachful air. “You can trust me,” he said. “I will keep your secrets. Come, tell me what worries you.”
    “It was all so different from what I expected. Aunt Patty had not given a hint.”
    “No hint?”
    “That everything was not…as it should be. She…she has sold Grantley Manor.”
    “Sold that beautiful house! What of the flourishing establishment?”
    “Apparently it did not flourish. I was astounded. I suppose one takes these things for granted. There was no reason why I shouldn’t. Aunt Patty had never as much as hinted that we were becoming poorer.”
    There seemed to be a sudden chill in the forest.
    He had stopped in his walk and looked at me tenderly. “My poor child,” he said.
    “Oh, it isn’t so bad. We’re not going to starve. Aunt Patty thinks it is all to the good. But then everything that happens seems to her all to the good.”
    “Tell me about it…if you wish to.”
    “I don’t know why I am talking to you like this…except that you seem so interested. You just seem to appear, first in the forest, then on the ship and now…You are rather mysterious, you know.”
    He laughed. “That makes it all the easier for you to talk to me.”
    “Yes, I suppose it does. I was going to avoid going into the town because I didn’t want to talk to people there who have known us for years.”
    “Well, tell me instead.”
    So I told him that Aunt Patty had had to sell the Manor because it was too expensive to keep up, and that we were going to a small house in another part of the country.
    “What shall you do?”
    “I don’t know…We have this little house somewhere in the Midlands, I believe. I really haven’t heard much about it yet. Aunt Patty makes it seem…not so bad, but I can see that Violet—that’s her very special friend who lives with us—is very disturbed.”
    “I can imagine so. What a terrible blow for you! My deepest sympathy. You seemed so merry when I saw you with your friends in the forest, and I fancied they were all a little envious of you.”
    We walked across the stunted grass and the wintry sun glinted through the bare branches of the trees. The smell of damp earth and foliage was in the air and I couldn’t help feeling that something significant would happen because he was with me.
    I said: “We have talked about me. Tell me about yourself.”
    “You won’t find that very interesting.”
    “Oh, but I shall. You have such a way of…appearing. It is quite intriguing really. The way you came upon us in the forest…”
    “I was taking a walk.”
    “It seemed so strange that you should be there, and then in the