Free Mine for a Day by Mary Burchell Page B

even further.
    His gratitude to her and his conscientious concern for her were no doubt as great as ever. But what girl in love wanted gratitude or conscientious concern from a man?
    Sitting on the side of the bed, with her head in her hands, she tried to tell herself that she had known all along there could be no warmer feeling for her. Only, illogically, her heart kept pleading that for a short while his manner had been different. She didn’t know why it had been—or why it had changed again. She only knew that there had been moments when she had broken through the wall of reserve and self-absorption which Rosemary had put around him, and made him see her and appreciate her in her own identity.
    But that, Leila reminded herself, was before the unfortunate conversation abo u t Mr. Brogner’s possible reactions. Then, in her exaggerated fear lest Simon should feel an unwelcome weight of responsibility for her, she had put up a wall of reserve. It was not Simon’s fault that he did not feel enough interest to discover what lay behind it.
    Which brought her round once more to the fact that her stay in this house could only be painful and humiliating, and that she was counting the hours until her release.
    The next morning, however, with a doggedness which said something for her character, she took up her task again with undiminished resolution. Frances might be absurd and trying, Simon might be unbearably indifferent, but Mrs. Morley—for whom all this unpleasantness was being endured—was in the same need as when she had first come.
    With all the skill at her command, Leila assumed the r ol e of the happy bride, and went to visit her supposed mother-in-law.
    “Come in, darling,” Mrs. Morley said, in answer to her knock.
    After the pettiness of Frances’s attitude and the distasteful complications of the deception in which she was involved, Leila found the simplicity and the unemotional charm of Mrs. Morley irresistible. She sat by the bed, happy and relaxed, and talked with her as though they had known each other all their lives. They had much the same sense of humour, they discovered, to their mutual satisfaction. And even the way they regarded Simon was not dissimilar.
    “You see him steadily, and love him faults and all, just as I do,” her supposed mother-in-law remarked, amused but approving. “Very unusual in a young bride. But that is how you do see him, isn’t it?”
    And because she knew that was literally the truth, Leila could only smile reluctantly and say, “Yes.”
    “Most girls are so thankful to have captured the man they love that they put a golden cloud round him in the early days, and usually have a shock, of course, when the cloud starts dispersing. But you seem to have retained the clearness of vision which goes with the even earlier stage,” Mrs. Morley added thoughtfully. “The stage when one isn’t very sure of one’s h appiness.”
    Leila gazed at her, fascinated, and a little alarmed, by such penetration.
    “Mrs. Morley, you see a great deal for someone who has to spend all day in bed,” she protested, with a slight, nervous laugh.
    “Darling, I am not a stupid woman, thank heaven.” Mrs. Morley gave her an extraordinarily roguish look. “Silly sometimes, which is quite a different thing, but not stupid. And I use my eyes.”
    “Yes. I—see you do.”
    Simon’s mother glanced at her, speculatively and amusedly.
    “Then if you have accepted that fact, perhaps you won’t be startled by what I am going to say,” she observed pleasantly. “What is the trouble between you and Frances?”

 
    CHAPTER V
    LEILA gasped.
    “What makes you think—? I haven’t said—”
    “No, darling. You haven’t said a thing,” Mrs. Morley assured her. “You’ve been a model of tactful reticence, and shifted off the subject of Frances every time I have come near it. Frances, too, hasn’t said a word. But her silences are much more informative. I might say she has been a model of tact