The Black Benedicts Read Online Free Page B

which was right beside his elbow. But although she saw him no more she could hear his footsteps moving towards the stairs and she became fairly galvanized into action. She raced along the corridor to her room, and when she reached it she found that she was actually turning the key in the lock and that her fingers were trembling.
    Why?
    She wasn ’ t at all sure. But what on earth had he thought of her, wandering about the gallery at that hour?

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    A few mornings later Mallory and Serena took their first walk together in the great park. It was one of those deceptively mild February mornings when spring seems just around the corner, and winter as good as departed. Serena discovered aconites in sheltered places, and Belinda displayed a violent enthusiasm for every rabbit hole she came upon, and it was Mallory ’ s job to extricate her, often with considerable difficulty, when her broad shoulders threatened to become stuck well below the surface of the ground.
    Serena, who was as blithe as the morning, ran gaily ahead of Mallory, and the latter thought grimly of the determined tussle she had had with Darcy, the Belgian nursemaid, when the question of taking her out arose. For Darcy had obstinate ideas about her charge, and amongst them was one that attributed a highly susceptible fragility to the lively ten-year-old, and looked upon sunless winter mornings as menacing to her, and exercise— unless undertaken in her own company—a thing not to be over-indulged in.
    Darcy was dour, and dark, and bad-tempered, and plainly the type to be jealous of a new governess. While it was true that Serena, if she wished, could twist her round her finger, her discipline was sometimes harsh, and her ideas of a routine for the child were strongly at variance with that which Mallory considered the only possible routine, when Serena did not attend school. Darcy was no believer in fresh air, and she had a weakness for the kitchen and cups of tea with the cook— e nlivened by fortune-telling by means of the tea-cups. And if Miss Serena liked that sort of thing, too, then she was the very last person to discourage her.
    But Serena, for all her precociousness, was quite a natural nine-year-old, and if there was any delicacy in her make-up it did not prevent her from running like the wind when the fancy took her, and climbing over gates and fences without much thought for her hand-made brogues and finely-pleated skirt.
    Serena ’ s clothes were made specially for her in London, and one or two of her finer frocks had been bought in Paris. Her wardrobe had astonished Mallory when she saw it for the first time, whilst waiting for Darcy to get her ready for her outing. She had as many changes as a film-star, and she took the keenest delight in the possession of so much rather unsuitable finery—or Mallory, who had been brought up on the principle of ‘h and ing down ’ to the next comer, could not quite persuade herself that it was suitable. And she wondered just how important a part her obviously much admired Uncle Raife played in the life of his niece.
    They were turning for home, and Serena was slightly ahead, still looking for wild flowers under every bush and shrub, when Mallory became aware of the man sitting absolutely still on the back of a big, statuesque-looking, black horse, watching them from beneath the brim of a soft felt hat pulled rather well down over his eyes.
    Despite the hat Mallory recognized him immediately as the man who had filled her with some moments of completely unreasoning panic a few nights before.
    The trees in that part of the park grew like the pillars of a cathedral soaring to the unseen grey of the winter sky. They were mostly beech, with granite-smooth trunks, growing in serried ranks, and they offered but little protection to anyone wishing for some reason to remain unseen while acting the part of an onlooker. And in the case of Raife Benedict, owner of all that goodly timber and many hundreds of