Flower for a Bride by Barbara Rowan Page A

open her door for her, and she hardly knew whether to feel more affronted or confused, because although he had agreed with her that there was nothing about her to tempt anyone to cherish her for her ornamental qualities alone, there was something glinting and amused in his look as it roved over her, and that look was oddly disturbing. But he said goodbye to her casually enough, and although Miss Mattie had expressed a desire to see her again he did not suggest that she should pay another visit to the quinta. He didn’t even ask her how long her holiday was likely to last, and how soon
    she would be returning to England.
    He merely got back into his beautiful car and drove away, and as she watched him disappear before entering the hotel she had a strange, empty feeling inside her.
    She also became acutely conscious of her dangling shoe buckle, and her crumpled dress, and decided that at least he should not catch her like that again.
    C H AP T E R FI VE
    Another couple of days passed surprisingly slowly for Lois, and although the color and the beauty were still there, catching her eye in whichever direction she turned it, she was conscious of something lacking that had not been lacking before. She began to feel the heat of the sun, and to be disinclined just to lie about on the beach; to wish that she had even a smattering of Portuguese so that she could sometimes talk to someone apart from the hotel receptionist, who spoke English perfectly; and in particular that she knew someone who would invite her to do something rather more exciting in the evenings than just sit and look at the stars peering at their reflection in the sea from the hotel balcony.
    The nights had such a breathless quality of beauty, but she had discovered that young Portuguese women did not wander about alone on the sea front at night, and so she usually went to bed very early. And that brought the somewhat aimless days round too quickly. And on the third day after her second visit to the Quinta de Valerira she had the misfortune to sprain her ankle on the steep steps hewn out of rough stone that led down to the beach.
    Someone helped her back to the hotel, and then a doctor told her that she would have to rest the ankle for a few days, and that meant incarceration in the hotel itself, and most of the time in her own hotel bedroom.
    The first day it wasn't so bad because the pain made her content to lie about with her damaged foot on a foot-rest and read one of the books she had brought with her from England, but by evening the silence of her room was beginning to prey upon her nerves a little. The next day she managed to hobble down to the dining room for lunch, but she once again had her dinner upstairs on a tray. By this time her room felt like a well of loneliness, and she wondered why she was spending hard-earned money on a
    holiday of this sort. She even thought longingly of the girls in her office, and wished that she had just one of them to pop in and cheer her up for a few moments, and express some sort of sympathy for her. For although everyone around her was very kind, much of their solicitude was lost on her when it was confined to words, and she had absolutely no idea what any of the words were attempting to convey.
    And in spite of sleeping tablets here ankle nagged so much at night that she hardly slept at all, and on the third morning—which that she had actually been in Portugal for ten whole days! —she was feeling so wretched that the chambermaid found her near to tears when she brought her coffee at eleven o’clock. She was still sipping the coffee and deciding that the rich stream of Portuguese the pleasant-faced chambermaid had poured out over her was expressive of a good deal of sympathy, when the door opened again and the same girl returned with a curiously gratified light in her eyes and ushered in no less a person than Dom Julyan de Valerira.
    Lois put down her coffee cup on the little table beside her and looked first amazed,