The Man of Gold Read Online Free Page B

smile.
    ‘Oh, Miss Unwin, it’s useless to attempt to conceal from you the true state of affairs. You must have seen what my situation is from your very first day in this house.’
    ‘I do not wish to know more than it is proper for me to know, sir.’
    ‘Sir? Sir? No, please, Miss Unwin, do not call me by such a title. I need a friend. Sometimes I think I need a friend more than ever man did.’
    Miss Unwin felt herself at a loss, and contrived to say nothing in answer.
    Certainly in the time she had been in the house she had already come to feel for Richard Partington a great deal of sympathy. He was a pleasant person. She detected in him, of necessity deep buried, the springs of generosity. She would not find it difficult to share friendship with him.
    But from the first moment she had contemplated becoming a governess she had known she must hold to one inflexible rule. If ever anywhere she found herselfunder the same roof as a gentleman whose affections were not engaged, she would keep herself strictly aloof. From all that she had heard she knew that to do otherwise was to court disaster.
    She had heard too much of young governesses seduced by the sons of the houses where they taught. That led easily and swiftly to ruin. It led, she knew, to the streets. Equally she had heard of cases where honourable love had been offered by a susceptible gentleman to a governess with some pretensions to beauty, and of the almost invariable opposition the hint of such a misalliance created in the young man’s family. That opposition could bring ruin almost as final as a life on the streets.
    Yet here, in the cold, cold house next to the pin factory, she felt her situation was in some way different.
    For one thing she had learnt that the reason Miss Cornelia Fulcher, that hater of the flies and dirt of London, had visited the capital was that a marriage between herself and her cousin was contemplated. So presumably Richard Partington’s affections were already fixed.
    His father spoke of the match on occasion in unmistakable terms.
    ‘Well, Richard,’ Miss Unwin had heard him say, ‘the life of a country gentleman should suit you well. You have a great capacity for ease.’
    And Richard Partington had remained silent, seemingly in agreement.
    Equally, Miss Fulcher made it plain on her every visit that it was Richard she had come to see.
    ‘Oh, Cousin Richard, I cannot agree with you more. You put it so well, so well.’
    And really, Miss Unwin had thought, Richard Partington had said nothing then that was not a mere ordinary observation.
    ‘Oh, Richard, I so look forward to the day I need come no more to London. The noise of town, its dirt andthose wretched, wretched flies everywhere.’
    ‘Come, Cornelia, there are surely no more flies in London than near a farmyard in the country.’
    ‘That may be so, Richard, my dear, but I assure you there is no farmyard within half a mile of Stavely.’
    ‘Is there not? I thought when I visited you on the sad occasion of your aunt’s funeral that I observed a farm within a hundred yards of the house gates.’
    ‘No, that is nothing. One could not call it a farm. There is a man there who keeps a few cows, no more.’
    ‘And those cows attract not a single fly?’
    ‘Now, Richard, you tease. You must know in truth that London abounds with the filthy creatures. Why, in Jack’s lodgings I have had to have fly-papers hung in every room. They are an abomination, but what else is to be done?’
    Here old Mr Partington had abruptly intervened.
    ‘Nothing is to be done, madam. Let a few flies have their little day. The fly-paper men are rogues, to the last one of them. I cannot tell you what they attempt to make one pay.’
    ‘And that, sir,’ Cousin Cornelia replied, with a trilling little laugh, ‘must be because you make no attempt to pay them.’
    Old Mr Partington had looked for a moment then as if he would produce a reply that would send this distant cousin scuttling from the