And Be Thy Love Read Online Free

the moment quite comfortable, and everything is being done for her that can be done. I have already spoken over the telephone to the hospital authorities, and nothing will be lacking in her treatment. She left behind her a note for you, and instructions about your room, which is all ready for you. And judging by the contents of the larder the house is well provisioned.”
    “You seem to have found out quite a lot in a short time” Caroline remarked, regarding him for the first time a little suspiciously. “You—you know your way about the house! Are you”—a fresh suspicion entering her mind—”a friend of the Comte de Marsac... ?”
    “You have hit upon it right away,” he declared, making her a small, formal bow. “I am Robert de Bergerac—if not de Marsac’s closest friend, at least sufficiently close to win his permission to stay here occasionally—very much at your service! And one of the complications confronting us is that your and my plans seem to have coincided, for I, too, have arrived on a visit...”
    “You mean,” in a small, dismayed voice, “that you plan to stay here?”
    “Did plan to stay here,” he reassured her, “but, naturally, now there will have to be some amendment to my plans. There is a small cottage in the woods not far from here where I have put up before, and I have no doubt I shall find it fairly habitable.”
    “But that wouldn’t be fair to you!” she declared agitatedly. “You are a friend of the Comte, and you have stayed here before. Whereas I -- ”
    “‘Whereas you, Mademoiselle Darcy,” with a whimsical gleam in his eyes, “must be a friend very highly esteemed by our excellent Marthe, judging by the preparations she has made for you! There are at least two hot-water bottles in your bed— according to Pierre!—a couple of cooked ducklings in the larder, and enough tarts, cheeses and savouries to propitiate the appetite of a regiment! And what I suggest is that you go straight upstairs to your room, and although old Pierre has an invalid sister whom he cannot leave for long, I will persuade him to bring you a tray of something light—that is if you have no objections to a very withered, very gnarled old man whose age none of us can guess at visiting you in your apartment...?” “/have no objection at all,” she assured him, thinking that he really had got the situation in hand, but feeling horribly guilty because she was about to exclude him from his rightful quarters. “But if the cottage has not been looked after for some time, and is perhaps damp, and in any case not ready for you-------------------------------?”
    “Don’t give it a thought,” he said carelessly, as if a damp, unprepared cottage was something he could take in his stride, although from his appearance a far more luxurious background was his daily lot. “After driving all the way from Paris I could sleep like a log in a bivouac to-night! But if you will tell me if there is anything I can do to be of assistance to you ?”
    And then she remembered her case, and told him all about it, and the pile of leaves beneath which it was concealed. She looked so concerned at this belated recollection of her few worldly possessions that he promised he would set off and recover them for her without delay; and not for the first time she thought that, although he was obviously a very debonair man of the world, and a little more humour occasionally dwelt in his eyes than the situation, and this disaster that had overtaken Marthe, seemed to call for, there was also something warmly practical about him— as, for instance, when he had prevented her from collapsing on the drive, and decided immediately that she was suffering from pure exhaustion and nothing else. That ought to have commended itself to her, even if she was a little loath for it to do so.
    He insisted on holding her arm as they walked out into the hall, and there old Pierre was waiting, as if he had been ordered to do so, and looking a