Free A Prologue To Love by Taylor Caldwell

it was chill and accepting. He inclined his head. At that moment Cynthia rustled into the room, smiling. A faint frown wrinkled the smooth skin between her brows at the sight of her son, who bowed to her.
     
    “Dear me, Timothy,” she said. “I thought you were having your tea upstairs.”
     
    “I was going, Mother,” he replied. He looked at Cynthia, and it was as though something like glass moved invisibly over his young and handsome face. Cynthia hesitated, then she kissed him quickly and gave a slight push. This was intended to impress him with the fact that he was still a child; it was also an attempt on the part of Cynthia to hide her aversion and to assert her authority. Timothy ignored the push; he bowed to John, then again to his mother, and walked with a stately grace out of the room.
     
    “Dear me,” sighed Cynthia. “Everyone tells me he is a most extraordinary boy, so good, so intelligent. His teachers just worship him. Now George was not in the least like him, nor am I. I just don’t know where he came from!”
     
    “He will be a great lawyer,” said John gloomily. “The kind men like myself need; we give them retainers.”
     
    “They keep you out of trouble,” Cynthia laughed. “Never mind. How distinguished you always look, John! If you were a lumberjack you’d still look distinguished.”
     
    If Timothy had been cut with dry steel-point, his mother had been cut with a flashing diamond. She literally sparkled from head to foot, from her formally dressed blond hair heaped in puffs and curls upon her small head to her pretty feet. There was a diamond bow in her hair, and her slippers twinkled with brilliants. A diamond chain hung about her neck and a large pear-shaped diamond dangled from it just where her full white breast began. She wore a gown of rose brocade, which twinkled when she moved; the hem, fluted, reminded John of the stola of Grecian women. The rear was gathered into a great and shimmering bustle. She had never appeared so beautiful to him, with her delicately flushed cheeks, her exquisite cheekbones, and her great gray eyes.
     
    I’ve bought something admirable, thought John, appeased, and his desire came upon him again. He kissed her roughly. “Careful,” said Cynthia, satisfied with the kiss. She lay back in the circle of his arms and looked at him with deep and passionate love.
     
    “You know very well it isn’t your birthday, Cynthia,” John said as Cynthia sat down with a silken rustle.
     
    “Of course I know,” she said gaily. “But anything is an excuse for a party, isn’t it? I am also having a birthday cake, with candles, for my fictitious birthday. After all, it is a day to celebrate.”
     
    His pleasure in her dropped. “In what way?” he asked. “Because I’ve just signed twenty-five thousand dollars a year over to you?”
     
    She did not answer him for a moment. Her smile went away; she looked at him with intense gravity. Then she said in a low voice, “If that is the way it appears to you, what can I say?”
     
    She made an effort to be lively again. She held out her arm to him, smiled once more, and said in a vivacious tone, “And look what you gave me for my birthday, dear John! Thank you so much. It’s delightful.”
     
    She was showing him a bracelet he had not seen before, a wide bracelet crowded with diamonds so large and so bright that it was almost blinding. “And think of it,” said Cynthia, “it cost only twelve thousand dollars! Isn’t it a bargain?” She looked at him with a strange expression and repeated more slowly, “Isn’t it a bargain — all of it?”
     
    But he saw nothing but the bracelet and was aghast. He drew back from her; it was twilight now and the only brilliance in the room was Cynthia.
     
    “My God!” exclaimed John. “That is about half of what you still have in the bank and in your investments! Cynthia, you are a fool! You must take it back at once; you can’t afford it.”
     
    She folded her