Red Lotus by Catherine Airlie Page B

safely in the hacienda long
     
    ago and that he was both anxious and worried about her. He glanced at the clock and then at his watch.
    "It is almost midnight," he said on a definite note of dismissal. "You must be tired after your journey. If there is anything you want that has been forgotten you have only to ring for Carlota or Sabino to fetch it—or to ask Sisa."
    He stood waiting, and for the first time Felicity was aware of her own incredible tiredness. It seemed as if a weight had been put upon her shoulders which was heavier than she could bear, the weight of running contrary to this man's will if she thought it necessary to do so in defence of her uncle's family.
    "Do you mind if I go to see my uncle?" she asked. He held the heavy door open for her.
    "I should have been disappointed if you had not," he said.
    Two elderly, black-clad servants were leaving Robert Hallam's bedroom when she approached the door and a third rose from her knees beside the bed when she went in.
    Standing there beside the great bed where her uncle lay, in the yellow glow of its flanking candles, she made her silent promise to look after his family. She had not known this man in life, but something of his strong character was still to be seen in the rugged face with its square jaw and black, beetling brows that stood out so plainly beneath the snow-white hair.
    In some ways it was the face of El Teide again, the granite countenance crowned by its white cap of snow, beneath which the ancient volcano slumbered. It was years, Philip Arnold had said, since El Teide had been it eruption, yet there was still evidence everywhere of the devastating effects of his wrath.
    And Philip himself had all the granite qualities of the sleeping giant of a mountain that guarded their silent valley, the harshness and the domination and the undeniable strength.
    Was it that strength, then, that her uncle had recognized and accepted as the only possible salvation for San Lozaro when he had gone?
    She did not know, and only the coming days would allow her to find out. She would try not to begin their enforced partnership with any personal prejudices lurking
     
    in the offing, although her uncle's agent had been at little pains to conceal his own.
    She could not forget that he had said that San Lozaro was already "full of superfluous women."
    Walking slowly along the gallery in the direction of her own rooms, she remembered her promise to Sisa. Was her cousin asleep by now, she wondered, and would it merely be awakening Sisa to fresh sorrow to go to her? But she had made a promise, and somehow she knew that Sisa would expect her to keep it.
    She tiptoed to the door outside of which she and Philip had waited, and immediately Sisa's voice bade her go in.
    Her cousin was in bed, her small figure entirely enveloped in a long nightgown liberally flounced with the island embroidery, her two dark plaits knotted together at her back. She looked small and peculiarly vulnerable sitting up there in the big bed with her hands clasped tightly about her knees and her eyes expectantly upon the door.
    "Hasn't Philip come?" she asked, trying to hide her disappointment when he did not appear. "He always comes to wish me goodnight."
    "I think he is rather worried about Conchita," Felicity confessed. "She hasn't come in yet. Does she generally stay out so late as this?"
    It did not seem at all incongruous to be speaking to Sisa as if she were an adult. She had an adult perception in most things and a quick way of expressing herself that made her seem older than her actual years. Felicity remembered that the Spanish girl matured young, that what would have seemed precocious in an English child of Sisa's age was only natural in the Spaniard, and she found herself waiting for Sisa's answer with the conviction that it would give her her first real insight into Conchita's character.
    "She is sometimes very late when she goes to Zamora, but that is because Rafael brings her home in his car.