Free Flowers Stained With Moonlight by Catherine Shaw Page A

at twenty, like I did! Ah, how I should have loved four more years of freedom!’ cried Sylvia.
    ‘Was it really necessary for you to marry immediately?’
    ‘George and Mother wanted it,’ she answered simply. ‘As for me …’
    ‘Sylvia,’ said Camilla, almost warningly, I thought. And most artfully, she turned the conversation onto other topics, and recounted a thousand anecdotes of her childhood and her travels on the continent, which enthralled us until we had finished the full tour of the lake and returned, hot and slightly muddy, to the house.
    We spent an uneventful evening all together, but as soon as bedtime approached, I began once again to itch with the desire to know if Sylvia would tell Camilla, in confidence, about the previous day’s interrogation. The three of us came up together, and separated into our rooms with a cordial goodnight. I prepared myself for bed and slipped under the eiderdown, but did not blow out my candle, for I was determined to see if Sylvia did not mean to talk with her friend in private. I dozed off in spite of the candle, which burnt out, but so tense was I that some time later I jumped awake, and immediately became aware of a tiny noise in the corridor, then the softest tapping, almost petting, at the door next to mine. I heard movements in the next room, and Camilla opened her door. There was faint whispering. Then I seemed to hear both girls slip away into Sylvia’s room, and a faint click as they shut themselves inside. From my room I could no longer hear the slightest sound, but quick as a wink, I rushed across to my secret door, moved the table, slid the carefully oiled bolt, pushed it open and silently stepped out. Hugging the wall as I had done earlier, I stole silently past the door leading from Camilla’s room into the strange large chamber in which I now found myself, and reached Sylvia’s. A light shone from underneath it, andas the crack under the door actually measured a good half an inch in height, I lay down and applied my eye to it.
    I could see only feet; Sylvia was sitting on her bed, and Camilla occupied the dainty chintz-covered armchair. But I could hear them well enough; they spoke in low tones, but did not whisper. To my surprise, however, their conversation did not at first turn upon the subject I had expected.
    ‘You’re mad,’ Camilla was saying in an anxious whisper. ‘Burn it, Sylvia!’
    ‘I can’t, I won’t!’ she answered stubbornly. ‘No one can find it – no one, Camilla. I’ve hidden it in a box with a key. A secret box, in fact. And I’ve hidden the key. No one can find it, ever. And no one would think to look there anyway.’
    ‘A secret box – what secret box?’
    ‘That,’ said Sylvia, with some gesture I could not see. ‘It has a secret compartment at the bottom. The jeweller showed me how to use it; it needs a special, very tiny key which I keep in an extra-secret place – you can’t even see the keyhole if you don’t know where it is. Oh, Camilla, if George never found it, no one ever will – there can’t be anybody, not even the police, more suspicious than George! I know he looked over my jewellery many a time, to see if I had any pieces he didn’t know about.’
    ‘My God, and you left it there?’
    ‘Well, yes, I did. I know it was a risk – I think I actually liked the risk! Part of me was afraid, but – some other part of me really would have liked him to find it! Can you understand that? Anyway, he never did.’
    ‘You’re out of your mind – it’s too dangerous! Burn it, Sylvia, please!’ begged Camilla in a voice of distress.
    ‘I can’t – I love it. It’s too beautiful. You don’t realise what it means to me. Especially when I’m alone. No one will ever find it, believe me. Don’t think about it any more, Camilla. I can’t think why you should worry about it when there’s something so incredibly much more frightening, and you haven’t even given me time to tell you about it! It’s