Love and the Loathsome Leopard Read Online Free Page B

fallen. I cannot bear it when I hear a thud in the night, because I know that either the exquisite paintings on them are ruined or the plasterwork is all over the floor and can never be replaced.”
    There was a note in her voice which told Lord Cheriton that she really minded.
    “I think you love this house,” he said aloud.
    “Yes, I love it. I have always loved it,” Wivina answered. “I used to come here when I was a very little girl. It seemed to me like a fairy Palace. Then after Lord Cheriton died it seemed so sad that everything should get dirty and dusty and there should be cobwebs everywhere.”
    She gave a quick glance at Lord Cheriton before she said,
    “Mrs. Briggs’s niece had nowhere to go after her husband was killed fighting in Portugal.”
    “So she is living here too?”
    Wivina nodded.
    “She was so grateful for a home and she said she would clean the place up. As you see, it now looks a little like it must have done years ago when Lady Cheriton was alive.”
    “You knew her?” Lord Cheriton enquired.
    He asked the question without thinking, then realised it was a silly one.
    “I must have been six or seven when she died,” Wivina reflected, “but I remember seeing her in Church and thinking how beautiful she was. In fact I used to think that angels must look just like her.”
    Lord Cheriton was silent.
    After a moment Wivina went on,
    “There is a picture of her upstairs. After she died and Lord Cheriton was too ill to leave his bedroom, I used to creep into the house to look at it and pray that one day I would be like her. She was very kind and everyone in the village loved her.”
    That was true, Lord Cheriton thought, but they had hated his father, loathed and detested him!
    He remembered when he passed in his carriage how he had seen the villagers shaking their fists at him and swearing beneath their breath.
    His thoughts had carried him away from Wivina for a moment and now he realised that she was looking at him, an expression of pleading in her blue eyes.
    “Now you understand,” she said, “that if you turn us away we shall, none of us – Mrs. Briggs, Rouse, Pender, Emma, Richard, and I – have anywhere to go.
    “Please – please don’t tell Lord Cheriton. He is hard and cruel like his father and he does not care if we starve to death.”
    “How do you know he is like that?” Lord Cheriton asked sharply.
    “How can he be anything else,” Wivina asked, “when he has sentenced this house – this lovely – beautiful old house to die?”

Chapter Two
    There was silence for a moment, then Wivina said in a different tone of voice,
    “I am – sorry. I should not have spoken like – that. It was – wrong of me.”
    “I think if one feels very deeply about anything,” Lord Cheriton replied, “one speaks the truth and that is what I would prefer to hear.”
    Again there was silence, then Wivina said,
    “I know that the late Lord Cheriton was a very hard, cruel man. Mrs. Briggs has told me how his son, John, ran away and no one ever heard of him again – but I suppose there are excuses for him.”
    “I don’t know what they could be,” Lord Cheriton said dryly.
    “Papa said that men were cruel to others when they themselves had suffered and were still suffering. He always tried to understand Lord Cheriton’s behaviour and to help him.”
    “And did he succeed?”
    Lord Cheriton thought that this was a conversation he had never expected to have with anyone.
    He had hated his father for so many years that he had never envisaged there could be any excuse for his intolerable behaviour.
    “Papa thought that he had failed,” Wivina admitted, “and that was why he blessed the house.”
    “Blessed the house?” Lord Cheriton ejaculated in astonishment.
    Wivina clasped her fingers together in her lap and Lord Cheriton knew that she was nervous as she said in a very low voice,
    “You will not understand –but both Papa and I believed that a house that was so old must