Love and the Loathsome Leopard Read Online Free

Cheriton said quietly, “that I will not tell the owner of this house anything you would not wish me to. At the same time, I would like to understand myself why the idea of his knowing that you are here should perturb you.”
    “I suppose you were bound to ask that,” she said with a little sigh.
    “I admit to feeling curious.”
    She looked at him again and he told himself with just a touch of amusement that it was the way he would look at a new recruit or an Officer who wanted promotion, searching for something deeper than the man’s external appearance, looking rather into his heart or perhaps his soul.
    There was a vague smile on his lips and after he had endured her scrutiny for some seconds he asked,
    “Well? Do I pass?”
    “It’s not that,” she said quickly. “It’s just that the future happiness of so many people depends on what you might say.”
    “Many people?”
    “The people who live here.”
    “May I beg you to explain?”
    “I must try to do so,” she said. “But I am afraid, desperately afraid, that if Lord Cheriton learns of what I have to tell you, he will turn us out.”
    “I think you can trust me not to tell him anything which might prove disastrous to you at any rate.”
    “That is kind of you, especially as you are promising before you know the truth.”
    “I feel that anything you have to tell me could not be entirely reprehensible,” Lord Cheriton said. “If you will trust me, I am prepared to trust you.”
    He was used to dealing with men, but he knew that the manner in which he spoke reassured her.
    As if she suddenly realised that he was standing just inside the door, she said quickly,
    “Forgive me. I have been very rude in not asking you to sit down, but you took me by surprise. I never thought – I never dreamt that anyone strange would come here. They never do.”
    “No strangers?”
    “No – never. They are too – ”
    She stopped suddenly and he felt she had been about to say something which might have been indiscreet.
    With her hand she indicated a chair by the fireplace and he walked towards it.
    As he did so, he looked at her more closely and realised, now that she no longer had her back to the window, that she was in fact very lovely.
    It was an unusual face, not in the least like that of any woman he could remember seeing before.
    Her eyes were blue, the colour of the delphiniums which stood in a vase beside the chair she had indicated to him, and her hair was very fair, so fair that it was, he thought, the colour of the dawn creeping up the sky to dispel the night.
    She was very slender and now that he could look more closely, he saw that her gown, like the furniture, was old and darned and had lost its colour, doubtless from frequent washings.
    And yet it did not disguise the soft curves of her body or the smallness of her waist.
    Lord Cheriton seated himself in the wing-back armchair and tried not to remember his father occupying it, and his mother pleading with him with a sob in her soft voice.
    He saw that the girl standing beside him was choosing her words with care and before she could speak Lord Cheriton said,
    “We have not introduced ourselves. May I tell you that my name is Stuart Bradleigh and I am in fact only passing through the village on my way to Dover.”
    He thought that her eyes seemed to light up at the information, and she answered,
    “I am Wivina Compton.”
    Lord Cheriton bowed.
    “May I say that I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Compton.”
    She did not reply, but seated herself opposite him and he thought that she moved gracefully and held her head proudly in a manner which would have graced any of the ballrooms he had attended since his return to England.
    She looked at him in silence until he said,
    “I am waiting, Miss Compton, and in case you are worried, may I assure you that anything you tell me will be in confidence, complete confidence, unless you give me leave to repeat it.”
    She flashed him a little smile,