The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt Page A

Chantel charmed naturally and easily, I told Ellen.
    â€œShe’s a real beauty,” said Ellen. “Things will be different now she’s come.”
    And they were. She was bright and efficient. Even Aunt Charlotte grumbled less. Chantel was interested in the house and explored it. She told me later that she thought it was the most interesting house she had ever been in.
    When Aunt Charlotte had been made comfortable for the night Chantel would come and sit in my room and talk. I think she was glad to have someone more or less her own age in the house. I was twenty-six and she was twenty-two; but she had lived a more interesting life, had traveled with her last patient a little and seemed to me a woman of the world.
    I felt happier than I had for a long time and so was the entire household. Ellen was interested in her and I believe confided in her about Mr. Orfey. Even Mrs. Morton was more communicative with her than she had ever been with me, for it was Chantel who told me that Mrs. Morton had a daughter who was a cripple and lived with Mrs. Morton’s unmarried sister five miles from Langmouth. That was where she went on her days off; and she had come to the Queen’s House and endured the whims of Aunt Charlotte and the lack of comforts because it enabled her to be near her daughter. She was waiting for the day she would retire and they would live together.
    â€œFancy her telling you all that,” I cried. “How did you manage to get her to talk?”
    â€œPeople do talk to me,” said Chantel.
    She would stand at my window looking out on the garden and the river and say that it was all fascinating . She was vitally interested in everything and everybody. She even learned something about antiques. “The money they must represent,” she said.
    â€œBut they have to be bought first,” I explained to her. “And some of them have not been paid for. Aunt Charlotte merely houses them and gets a commission if she makes a sale.”
    â€œWhat a clever creature you are!” she said admiringly.
    â€œYou have your profession which is no doubt more useful.”
    She grimaced. At times she reminded me of my mother; but she was efficient as my mother would never have been.
    â€œPreserving lovely old tables and chairs might be more useful than preserving some fractious invalids. I’ve had some horrors I can tell you.”
    Her conversation was amusing. She told me she had been brought up in a vicarage. “I know now why people say poor as church mice. That’s how poor we were. All that economy. It was soul-destroying, Anna.” We had quickly come to Christian names, and hers was so pretty I said it was a shame not to use it. “There was Papa saving the souls of his parishioners while his poor children had to live on bread and dripping. Ugh! Our mother was dead—died with the birth of the youngest, myself. There were five of us.”
    â€œHow wonderful to have so many brothers and sisters.”
    â€œNot so wonderful when you’re poor. We all decided to have professions and I chose nursing because, as I said to Selina, my eldest sister, that will take me into the houses of the rich and at least I can catch the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.”
    â€œAnd you came here!”
    â€œI like it here,” she said. “The place excites me.”
    â€œAt least we shan’t give you bread and dripping.”
    â€œI shouldn’t mind if you did. It would be worth it to be here. It’s a wonderful house, full of strange things, and you are by no means ordinary, nor is Miss Brett. That is what is good about this profession of mine. You never know where it will lead you.”
    Her sparkling green eyes reminded me of emeralds.
    I said: “I should have thought anyone as beautiful as you would be married.”
    She smiled obliquely. “I have had offers.”
    â€œBut you’ve never been in love,” I