Free The Sword of Fate by Dennis Wheatley

crowd. I’m afraid I can’t carry a tray myself because I’m in uniform, but I could accompany anybody who has one and sell from it to the ladies. I’ve often helped my mother with bazaars at home and I know from experience that at shows like this the women will always buy much more readily from a man.”
    My mother had died long before I was old enough to help her at bazaars, but the mention of her was well calculated to strike the right note with Madame Diamopholus, and beaming upon me she did exactly as I had hoped she might. Daphnis was already carrying such a tray as I had mentioned. Her mother promptly called her.
    When she saw me Daphnis went as white as a sheet. For a second I thought she was going to faint, but fortunately her mother hardly glanced at her before turning back to me while burbling:
    “My dear, thees gentleman will ’elp you to sell from ze tray. ’E is Mr….”
    “Day,” I supplied. “Julian Day.”
    She beamed again:
    “Mos’ kind of you to ’elp, Mr. Day. Thees ees my daughter, yes. I ’ope you make much money for ze Fund.”
    I did not dare to take Daphnis’ arm to lead her away, but I hustled her out of earshot as quickly as I decently could, and without a word led her through the back of the refreshment marquee, where it was cool, semi-dark and there were a number of chairs. With a little gasp she plumped down on one as though her legs had been just about to give way.
    “That’s better,” I said quietly. “Would you like a drink?”
    She shook her head, so I went on:
    “All right, then. Take it easy for a few minutes. I’m sorry if I gave you a shock.”
    “To see you here was the last thing I expected,” she murmured.
    “That’s just how I felt when Alcis told me that you were engaged to be married.”
    “So Alcis told you. I guessed as much,” she said with sudden bitterness.
    “Are you implying that you had intended to keep it secret?”
    She looked up suddenly, her eyes defiant.
    “What has my engagement to do with you? For all I know you’re engaged yourself to some girl in England. You wouldn’t want to marry a Greek, and in any case my parents certainly wouldn’t let me marry you, so marriages and engagements have nothing whatever to do with it, and if Alcis hadn’t been a spiteful little fool she would have kept her mouth shut.”
    This short tirade presented an entirely new viewpoint to me. It seemed that, having decided in her own mind that there could be no question of marriage between us, Daphnis felt that fact absolved her from letting me know anything about her engagement, and in the meantime she regarded it as entirely her own affair if she cared to deceive her fiancé to the extent of entering upon a secret romance with me.
    Before I could speak she went on:
    “I suppose that’s the reason that you didn’t come back later; or was it that Alcis never gave you my message that I’d come down myself and let you in at half past one?”
    “She never told me,” I muttered, “but perhaps that was my fault, as I left her pretty abruptly. You—you really wanted to see me after all, then?”
    “Of course I did!” she exclaimed half-petulantly, tears starting to her eyes.
    “But what about Paolo?” I asked. “Where does he come in?”
    “He doesn’t come in—at least not as far as you’re concerned.”
    “But, hang it all, you are engaged to him, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, but because one’s engaged to someone it doesn’t follow that one is in love with him.”
    At last a little light began to dawn in my bemused brain. I had been regarding this engagement all along as one would in England, where it is usual to assume in the case of young people that engaged couples are in love with each other; but in many foreign countries the old system of marriage by arrangement still goes on. Doubtless this Italian diplomat was an excellent
parti
, and Daphnis’ family had fixed up the match without evenconsulting her. With her upbringing it would be