Free Flower for a Bride by Barbara Rowan Page A

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    “Yes?”
    “Today he is visiting a family we know very well—a family almost as old as the Valeriras. The eldest daughter married a couple of years ago, but her husband was killed in an air crash about a year after the marriage, and she has just returned a widow from the United States, where she has been living with his parents. Fortunately she has been left very comfortably off, but she will undoubtedly wish to take another husband, and there was a time when everyone supposed that she and Julyan—well, many people believed that he would pick upon her instead of the wife he did pick upon, and there is no doubt, I think, that they have a great admiration for one another. They have what I think can be best described as a kind of mental attunement.”
    “Meaning that they think alike on—on important subjects?”
    “On most subjects, I would say. They have similar temperaments.”
    “I—see.” Lois was glad of the temporary diversion caused by Miss Mattie’s sewing falling from her lap, and as she bent and retrieved it and the color became heightened in her cheeks it was simple for anyone to decide that it was merely the result of bending her head forward swiftly. “And is she—is she as beautiful as Donna Valerira was?”
    “She is not in the least beautiful,” Miss Mattie replied calmly. “But she is attractive—very attractive.”
    “I—I see,” Lois said again, and was almost passionately thankful for the sight of Maria advancing towards them across the lawn with the tea things.
    She didn’t know why, but the rest of the afternoon was not nearly as pleasant as the early part, but Miss Mattie—studying her when she was unaware that she was being studied—could have told her if she had chosen to do so why it was that the flowers seemed less brilliant, the sunshine less golden, and the butterflies less gay and abandoned. And inwardly the old lady sighed, and wondered whether she ought to issue a stronger warning.
    But she had no opportunity to do so, for hardly had they started tea than Dom Julyan himself returned, and seated beside him in the blue car as it sped up the drive was Donna Gloria Colares.
    Lois found herself plunged into a kind of confusion, for having only just finished discussing the very person she now found herself presented to she was certain that a kind of selfconsciousness showed in her face. Donna Colares, on the other hand, having been fully prepared for meeting her, and perhaps just a little curious to know what she looked like, gave her a rather more than casual glance, followed y a smile and a brief handshake, and then to Lois’s surprise actually embraced Miss Mattie, and kissed her as if she was genuinely pleased to see her again.
    “You are the one thing about Alvora that doesn’t change, Miss Mattie,” she told her. “You remain as I always seem to have known you, calm and content and with your hands always occupied with something useful,” indicating the garment that was intended for Jamie. “That child,” smiling at Jamie, “must have a wardrobe vaster than any small boy really needs.”
    “When Mattie sits with her hands in her lap, then she will no longer be Mattie,” Dom Julyan remarked, but although his glance rested affectionately on his old governess, it travelled almost immediately to Lois, and he enquired with rather flattering concern: “Your ankle is no longer troubling you very much, I hope, Miss Lois? You have been obeying instructions and resting it?”
    Lois answered with a flush she felt was infinitely revealing rising in her cheeks:
    “I have been having a deliciously lazy afternoon, thank you, Senhor, and Miss Gregg has been more than kind to me.” Donna Colares stretched herself gracefully in a chair, and looked across the tea table at her.
    “A sprained ankle is a great handicap,” she said, “especially if you happen to be on holiday. I understand that you are on holiday here, Miss Fairchild?” “I am going