Master of Glenkeith Read Online Free Page B

for her hospitality and tell—Miss Halliday that I shall come back to collect her the day after tomorrow.”
    “But she is here!” Luigi smiled. “She is waiting to take you back to the Corso by a way that you would not find by yourself.”
    Andrew swung round to find Tessa standing dutifully behind him in the aperture of the window. She was still smiling, but he imagined a new reserve in her for a moment before she turned back into the room to make way for him.
    “If I had known you were already packed and waiting,” he said almost frigidly as they went down the outside stairs, “I should have arranged our return for to-morrow instead of Friday.”
    Her eyes opened wide in surprise.
    “But surely you will want to see Rome while you are here?” she suggested, as if the thought of his indifference or pressure of business anywhere else had never entered her head. “There is so much to see. The Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Palatine—St. Peter’s itself! They have so much to give—a glimpse into the distant past, the art of another age. You cannot go away without having had at least that glimpse!”
    “I know nothing of art,” Andrew said, conscious of bewilderment at the maturity of her observations and suddenly aware that his remark must have sounded uncommonly churlish when she did not reply.
    When he turned to look down at her, the violet-coloured eyes under their dark lashes seemed enormous.
    “It seems impossible,” she said with a deepening seriousness, “that anyone should not appreciate the Eternal City. Would it not stir you to stand in the footprints of the past? Would you find nothing in the Forum where the Romans and the Etruscans and the Sabines came down from their separate hills to do their marketing and sacrificing to their gods? Would you feel only bored on the spot where Mark Antony delivered his oration over Caesar’s body or standing beside the fountain where
    Castor and Pollux watered their milk-white steeds? On the Palatine,” she went on in a gentle, convincing way, “there is the Cave of the Wolf which suckled Romulus and Remus.” Suddenly she thrust all seriousness from her, laughing till her eyes danced. “I could not teach you to appreciate all these things in a day, Mr. Meldrum, but I could show them to you, and I could make you love Rome, even though you do not want to look farther than Scotland for your happiness!”
    The amazing contrast in her make-up, the suggestion of something half-child, half-woman, which he had encountered even in the first moment of their meeting, baffled Andrew so that he looked sharply away from the teasing expression in her eyes, concentrating frowningly on the way ahead.
    She had led him back on to the Corso by a series of side passages and narrow streets. The teeming life of the wide, sophisticated boulevard seemed to belong to another world, but in some ways Tessa belonged to it, too. She did not seem to have any inhibitions, he mused, looking down at her dark head as she moved beside him, her shoulders straight, her eyes alive and bright as she threaded her way through the busy throng.
    “Rome can be very beautiful in this light,” she observed. “My father and I used to walk all the way to the Capitol just to see the play of it on the white travertine which is almost as beautiful as marble and in some ways not so cold.” She looked at him with an elfin grin. “Perhaps you will not understand that, but my father was an artist.”
    Andrew felt impatient, even vaguely angry, yet there was no reason why he should care what she thought about him or whether he was lacking in understanding of the arts.
    “Here is your hotel,” she said in an entirely different voice. “There will be plenty of room at this time of year. While you go in and register I shall wait out here in the sunshine. After it has rained in Rome we appreciate the sunshine so very much more.”
    He wanted to tell her not to wait but found that he could not look directly into