The Benevent Treasure by Patricia Wentworth

Author:Patricia Wentworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

CHAPTER 18

The Deanery party broke

up in due course. Everyone told Mrs. Mayhew how much they had enjoyed it, and in most cases they spoke no more than the truth. Louisa Arnold, coming back into her own house with her cousin, was really quite reluctant to admit that the evening was over and to say good-night. It was so very pleasant to linger by what was left of the drawing-room fire and gossip for a while.

“I am really quite charmed with Candida Sayle, but, my dear, did it not strike you that Stephen was too?”

Miss Silver smiled. She could have expressed it a good deal more strongly than that, but she refrained.

“And, my dear Maud, did you notice Derek Burdon and that nice girl I was telling you about, Jenny Rainsford? They seemed to be having quite a serious talk, and I don’t think I have ever seen Derek look serious before.”

“He is very goodlooking.”

“Oh, quite charming. And he really plays delightfully. Not highbrow enough for Mrs. Mayhew, but she can’t help liking him—no one can. He has been dangling after Jenny for months. Olivia Benevent was watching them tonight, and she didn’t look at all pleased—not at all. It’s a shocking life for him, being spoiled and pampered at Underhill, but I don’t see how he could get out of it now. I fancy Olivia would like to get him married to Candida.”

Miss Silver was wearing the dark blue crêpe-de-chine dress. With the gold locket which bore her parents’ initials in high relief and contained locks of their hair, it supplied her modest social needs. For the party at the Deanery she had substituted light silk stockings for her usual black wool, changed during the summer months for lisle thread. With an almost new pair of glacé shoes, she had felt very well equipped. She said a little primly,

“I do not fancy that Miss Olivia has any chance of seeing her wishes fulfilled. Young people have a way of taking these matters into their own hands.”

“Oh, yes, indeed! But Olivia always has to have things her way. She was like that as a child, and she could be very nasty indeed if she was crossed.”

“No one can expect to have his own way all the time.”

“Well, Olivia does. And she bullies Cara shockingly—she always has. Maud, didn’t you think she was looking terribly ill? I really felt quite concerned.”

“Miss Cara?”

Louisa Arnold nodded.

“I thought she looked terrible. And all that black—so unbecoming.” She looked down complacently at her own full skirt of mauve and blue brocade. “But of course it is just about three years since Alan Thompson went off in that extraordinary way. Cara was always one for keeping anniversaries. A great mistake. I remember Papa saying so—‘dragging things back to be miserable over, when Heaven in its mercy has lightened the load of grief!’”

Miss Silver smiled benignly.

“Your father was not only a sensible man, he was a Christian.”

Louisa Arnold’s eyes were suddenly moist.

“Oh, yes!”

The Misses Benevent drove home in silence.

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