Blue Murder by Harriet Rutland Page A

seconds.
    At length she said, quietly.
    â€œI think that’s quite the nicest thing any man has ever said to me.”
    â€œOh, rot!” exclaimed Arnold in some embarrassment, for he had made the remark as a joke. “You must know dozens of people who pay you better compliments than that.”
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t,” she said, still serious. “Women don’t like me, and I scarcely know a dozen men. It’s quite true,” she went on, cutting short his polite protest. “My people are so difficult. Daddy scowls if a man looks at me —he’d be so lost without me to look after him. And Mother! Well, you can see for yourself how helpless she is. I haven’t had much chance to make many friends. You simply can’t realise what it has meant to me to have you to go walks with, and talk to. Oh, I’m not being sloppy, or anything like that. You know I’m not that kind of girl. I’ve thought, once or twice, that your own life must have been almost as quiet, that is, unless you’re married and want to keep it quiet for a bit.”
    Arnold laughed.
    â€œNo, I haven’t got a wife up my sleeve,” he said. “And, in a way, you’re right about my life. I’ve certainly never met a woman I wanted to marry, and I’m afraid it’s a bit too late now. For one thing, she’d have to have plenty of money, and rich women are a bit difficult to find nowadays.”
    Leda glanced at him quickly to see whether he was joking.
    â€œYou never know your luck,” she said. “As for being too late—well, you know what the song says, ‘When you fancy you are past love, it is then you meet your last love.”
    â€œâ€˜And you love her as you’ve never loved before! H’m, I wonder.”
    â€œWell, here we are!” exclaimed Leda, as she brought the car to a standstill outside the station. “No time to wonder now: you’ll only just catch that train. You don’t expect me to come onto the platform, I hope. I can’t bear waving and shouting sweet nothings while the engine blows off steam. Good-bye. Take care of yourself, and come back soon.”
    She turned the car and drove off, leaving Arnold to wonder whether he had imagined that her eyes were wet.
    He chose a compartment, and, having settled in a corner seat, glanced in desultory fashion at the morning paper.
    But he soon grew tired of this.
    Reading the papers wasn’t much good nowadays, he thought. Once you’d listened to the wireless news, the printed words were just so much repetition, and the less official columns were given up to speculations about what Hitler might do next. As if everyone wasn’t so sick of the little house-painter that they’d ceased to care what he did!
    He gave the paper to a rather forlorn-looking man opposite, who received it avidly. Then he folded his arms and began to think about Leda.
    The stay-at-home daughter was not so common now as in his younger days, and this, he felt, was as it should be. It was a shame that a young, capable girl like Leda should have so few chances. Young? Well, she must be about thirty-two, he supposed, but that was considered the most attractive age for a woman in these enlightened times. Women no longer lived in Quality Street.
    Yes, he might have considered marrying Leda if she had had money of her own: they were good friends, and what with his books and her dogs, they might make a great success of life together. He might have considered it, even, if she had been in the least attractive physically. But, after all, he hadn’t remained a bachelor for fifty years for the sake of a woman who hadn’t a jot of feminine charm, or what was known in the language of to-day as “oomph.” He wouldn’t mind making a fool of himself over one of those “devastating redheads” about whom he heard a lot, but had as yet never seen. But... Leda...! She wasn’t