Bride of Pendorric by Victoria Holt

doing about the baggage. Afterwards we’ll have something to eat, and perhaps I’ll take you for a walk in the moonlight—if Acre’s any to be had.” I said I thought it was an excellent idea, and they left me.
    When I was alone I went once more to the windows to gaze out at that magnificent view. I stood for some minutes, my eyes on the horizon, as I watched the intermittent flashes of the lighthouse.
    Then I went into the bathroom, where bath salts and talcum powder had all been laid out for me—my sister-in-law’s thoughtfulness, I suspected. She was obviously anxious to make me welcome, and I felt it had been a very pleasant homecoming.
    If only I could have thought of Father at work in his studio I could have been very happy. But I had to start a new life;
    I must stop fretting. I had to be gay. I owed that to Roe; and he was the type of man who would want his wife to be gay. I went into the bathroom, ran a bath and spent about half an hour luxuriating in it.
    When I came out. Roe had not returned, but my bags had been put in the room. I unpacked a small one and changed from my suit to a silk dress; and I was doing my hair at the dressing-table, which had a three-sided mirror, when there was a knock at the door. ” Come in,” I called, and turning saw a young woman and a child. I thought at first that the child was Lowella and I smiled at her. She did not return the smile but regarded me gravely, while the young woman said:
    ” Mrs. Pendorric, I am Rachel Bective, the children’s governess. Your husband asked me to show you the way down when you were ready.”
    “How do you do?” I said, and I was astonished by the change in Lowella.
    There was an air of efficiency about Rachel Bective, whom I guessed to be around about thirty, and I remembered what Roe had told me about a schoolmistress looking after the twins’ education. Her hair was a sandy colour and her brows and lashes so fair that she looked surprised; her teeth were sharp and white. I did not warm towards her.
    She seemed to me to be obviously summing me up, and her manner was calculating and critical.
    ” This is Hyson,” she said. ” I believe you met her sister.”
    ” Oh I see.” I smiled at the child. ” I thought you were Lowella.”
    ” I knew you did.” She was almost sullen.
    “You are so much like her.”
    ” I only look like her.”
    ” Are you ready to come down?” asked Rachel Bective. ” There’s to be a light supper because I believe you had dinner on the train.”
    ” Yes, we did and I’m quite ready.”
    For the first time since I had come into the house I felt uncomfortable, and was glad when Rachel Bective led the way along the corridor and down the staircase.
    We came to a gallery and I did not realise that it was not the same one which I had seen from the north side until I noticed the picture there and I knew that I had never seen that before.
    It was the picture of a woman in a riding jacket. The habit was black and she was very fair; she wore a hard black hat, and about it was a band of blue velvet which hung down forming a snood at the back. She was very beautiful, but her large blue eyes, which were the same colour as the velvet band and snood, were full of brooding sadness.
    Moreover the picture had been painted so that it was impossible to escape those eyes. They followed you wherever you went, and even in that first moment I thought they were trying to convey some message.
    ” What a magnificent picture!” I cried.
    ” It’s Barbarina,” said Hyson, and for a moment her face was filled with vitality and she looked exactly as Lowella had when she had welcomed us.
    “What an extraordinary name! And who was she?”
    ” She was my grandmother,” Hyson told me proudly. ” She died … tragically, I believe,” put in Rachel Bective.
    “How dreadful! And she looks so beautiful.”
    I remembered then that I had seen a picture of another beautiful woman in the north hall when I had arrived and had heard