Free Nurse for the Doctor by Averil Ives Page B

life before, but never one with blue-black shadows in his hair, a kind of ivory pallor, and eyes of an almost fluid blackness—a blackness that reached out and could engulf one, she thought, feeling a little surprised as the thought passed through her mind.
    “The early morning is one of the nicest times out here,” he said. “If you are an early riser you can enjoy an experience you will not come upon even in England.”
    “Then I will certainly get up early,” she promised. She raised the large brown eyes that had always struck Michael as slightly doe-like, to his face. “Do you know England, senor ?” she asked. “The way you said ‘even in England’ sounded as if you are familiar with it.”
    He smiled.
    “Of course I am familiar with it. Who is not familiar with England?—or would not be if they could! As a matter of fact, I spent the better part of my early life in England, being educated at one of your well-known schools, and visiting my English grandmother, who unhappily has been many years dead.”
    “Your—English grandmother?” She looked at him in really keen surprise. “I had no idea that you are only partly Spanish.”
    “No?” His smile was a little quizzical, as his eyes watched her. “Is that something, perhaps, you feel I should be thankful for?” The smile revealing beautiful, even teeth. “But I assure you I am even more proud of my Spanish ancestry, and therefore it must mean that I am truly at heart a Spaniard!” He selected from his case one of the thin, flat, greyish-looking cigarettes she had noticed he smoked a quantity of, and having lighted it continued to regard her as if she amused him just a little. “Did you not know that my mother was partly English? That is how she and Mrs. Duveen became acquainted. They moved in the same circles when my mother was young, and enjoyed the same form of education.”
    “Oh, yes, I did know that—I mean, I knew that they went to school together, and saw a lot of one another in their young days.” But, try as she would, as she gazed at him, she could not think of him as a man with a solitary drop of prosaic English blood in his veins. To her, when she met his eyes, he suggested a thin veneer of polite, self-contained ice over all sorts of possibilities. She repeated to herself, “All sorts of possibilities!” and suddenly her cheeks were dyed scarlet because of the way he looked at her.
    “Well, senorita ,” he demanded, very softly, “what is it that you are thinking?”
    A crisp voice from the far end of the room came to Josie’s rescue. The elderly white-haired lady in the black lace shawl swept together her cards and called out commandingly: “Summon my car for me, Carlos, and I will say good night to you all! These cards will not come out in the way I wish, and I will waste no more time on them.” She stood up, looking very tall and slightly arrogant, leaning on the head of a slender ebony cane, and the marquis instantly remembered his manners as a host.
    “At once, Tia Amelie !” he responded, and sprang to his feet to reach forth his hand to an old-fashioned bell-rope. But when he moved away from Josie’s chair he bent over her and apologized: “I must leave you, Miss Winter, to attend to the departure of my aunt—but if it is true that you had a headache, I hope it will be quite gone in the morning.” And she was left sipping the remainder of her drink and wondering whether by that he wished her to guess that Mrs. Duveen’s statement about her headache had not deceived him for one moment. She also felt a little glow of warmth around her heart because he had stayed to talk to her, and had apologized for leaving her.
    As the old lady tap-tapped past Josie’s chair she paused for an instant and bent over her.
    “My nephew did not think fit to present you to me, young woman,” she said in excellent English—the sort of English that lent itself easily to colloquialism—“but I, too, am familiar with England, and