Free The Stars of San Cecilio by Susan Barrie Page A

dealings with you,’ he told her, thinking that she looked like a delicate sprite in her pastel-tinted sun-suit, the most modest sun-suit he had ever seen any young woman wear, and with her hair of palest wedding-ring gold, and her large, clear, slightly wistful eyes. Looking into them he decided that they were the grey of the fires that burned in English woodlands in the autumn, and her mouth was positively flower-like. He wondered why she had made so little impression on him when they had met before, and then came to the conclusion that it was because she had kept so skilfully out of his way. She was not the type to thrust herself on anybody’s vision. ‘ Even that doctor chappie you work for now looked the least little bit irritated when his lovely lady friend — and, by Jove, she is lovely, isn’t she? — kept sailing into you for neglecting your charge. And of course you weren’t neglecting your charge!’
    He repeated this when the others drove up, and Dona Beatrice looked at him with a peculiar kind of half-inviting smile in her eyes.
    ‘I came to inquire how Gia was doing today,’ he said, as Gia’s father looked at him without a suspicion of a smile in his eyes. ‘I understand she’s more or less fully recovered.’ And as Gia’s laughter reached them from the other side of the house, where she was helping Senora Cortina’s elderly husband sweep out the patio with a stiff birch broom, it was impossible for anyone to deny this.
    ‘Children recover quickly from upsets,’ was all the doctor
    remarked.
    ‘Stomach upsets, yes,’ Peter agreed. ‘But not frights like getting out of their depth, or anything of that sort,’ looking Fernandez straight in the eyes, as if he at least had not forgotten Lisa’s humiliation of the day before. ‘And as Gia can’t swim a foot without being supported there was never any question of her getting out of her depth, and certainly no question of Lisa neglecting her.’
    ‘We are reasonably convinced now that Gia had been eating too many chocolates of a rather too excellent quality,’ Dona Beatriz informed him, a little dryly.
    Peter looked relieved.
    ‘Well, that lets you out, Lisa!’ he exclaimed. ‘And, incidentally, me, as well! ’ he added. ‘I don’t like being accused of permitting a small kid to run into danger.’ He sounded the least little bit aggressive.
    Dona Beatriz smiled at him this time as if it was her particular aim to soothe him.
    ‘In the heat of the moment one is apt to be unjust, perhaps, ’ she admitted, ‘ and naturally Dr. Fernandez has a great deal of concern for an only child. It should not be too difficult to understand. ’
    But the Englishman didn’t look impressed.
    ‘I was just commiserating with Lisa on being forced continually to look after other people’s children,’ he confessed, ‘my own brother’s amongst them! It must be a pretty thankless task sometimes. ’
    ‘No doubt,’ Dona Beatriz agreed. ‘But, in that case, the answer surely is that Miss Waring must get married and have some of her own?’ with an archness that brought a flame of color to Lisa’s cheeks, and caused Peter to look amused. ‘If you are a friend of Miss Waring’s, Mr. Hamilton-Tracey,’ the Spanish woman went on, as if an idea had only just occurred to her, ‘you must come and have lunch with us sometimes, or perhaps dinner one night would suit you better? Don’t you agree with me, Julio, that if Miss Waring and Mr. Hamilton-Tracey are old friends they simply must see something of one another sometimes, apart from odd meetings on the beach?’
    Dr. Fernandez said formally that he understood that Miss Waring and Mr. Hamilton-Tracey scarcely knew one another, but no doubt when two people of the same nationality met abroad they experienced a desire to pursue the acquaintance. It was fairly easily understood. And then he added, even more formally, that he had no objection to Mr. Hamilton-Tracey lunching, or dining, at the villa; and Dona