Sunshine Yellow Read Online Free Page B

criticism.
    “As far as I’m concerned I say good luck, Stephen ... and good luck, Penny! She’ll probably need it, anyway.” she added thoughtfully. “And at least you can comfort yourself with the thought that we now have Stephen in the family! He didn’t marry me, but he has married your niece. That’s really quite extraordinary if you stop to think about it.”
    Mrs. Wilmott exploded with a violence that actually surprised her daughter. The latter had had everything made easy for her these last few weeks, and it was the devoted mother who had borne the brunt of all the awkwardness and the planning to get away from it all. She had had to cancel arrangements, make things sound feasible to intimate friends, spend money like water after having spent too much already on all the splendid trimmings for a first-class wedding, and now with nothing but stilted letters from her bank manager likely to reach her, and a whole pile of bills still to be met, Veronica turned round on her and accused her of engineering the marriage that had not come off.
    “Well, and what if I did?” she shrilled, looking for the first time in her life with distaste at her own daughter. “What if I did make up my mind that you should marry well? All your life I’ve done everything I could for you—bought you the most expensive clothes, sent you to horribly expensive schools! And to do it I had literally to crawl to my bank manager to get him to extend my overdraft over and over again! And all for nothing, because you let me down over Stephen, who would have made you a far better husband than you’re likely to get now that everyone knows you’ve jilted a man. A man with a reputation to consider!”
    Veronica’s glorious violet eyes grew suddenly baleful. “You should have thought of that, Mummy darling, before you made such a wholesale grab at Stephen!”
    Mrs. Wilmott gathered up her writing-pad, the telegram, everything that she could lay her shaking hands on, in preparation for withdrawing to their suite inside the hotel.
    “And I don’t mind telling you, Veronica, that unless you do marry someone soon who has a great deal of substance behind him—whether you like him or not, or whether you even fancy you’re in love with him—there will be no more trips abroad of this sort for you and me, and I shall have to sell Grangewood. I’m not being spiteful, or joking ... that is the absolute truth!”
    Veronica saw Martin Myers, her American—who unfortunately hadn’t been able to impress her with his tales of life at home in “little old N’ York”—returning with a waiter bearing a tray of drinks in tow, and she sat up hastily and tried to soothe her mother.
    “All right, Mummy, I get your point, but please don’t get yourself worked up when the temperature’s as high as it is. And, remember, Penny is your niece, and she was always a very devoted and amenable niece. You may live to be glad that she’s married Stephen and not let him become a prey for someone far less scrupulous. And don’t you think you ought to send off a telegram congratulating them?”
    Mrs. Wilmott had also caught sight of the American, and she had no wish to sit and listen to his nasal accent while the sun beat down on the terrace and her head was throbbing with indignation, and she was amazed at her daughter’s attitude.
    “All right,” she said coldly, tugging her wide straw hat down over her eyes, and losing her sunglasses as she bent to retrieve her knitting. “I will do that, because I’m beginning to think Penny was much more deserving of all that I’ve done for you than my own daughter! I’ll tell her I forgive her for being unscrupulous, and wish her well ... and Stephen, of course! Shall I say that you also wish them every happiness?” with much dryness.
    “Of course,” Veronica replied complacently, and her mother stalked off to become involved with one of the reception clerks over the matter of sending a telegram to England.
    But by