Will You Love Me in September

Leigh nodded. "She will have money in due course," he said. "Jeremy left everything to Damaris-with the exception of an annuity to Smith-so it will go to Sabrina, I suppose. I think Enderby should be sold.”

«Yes>" * said emphatically.

'Do you think Lance will agree to have Sabrina living with you?”

I am sure he will.”

"He's a good husband. I'm happy for you, Clarissa, in that, Damaris always used to say how contented she was to see you in a happy marriage. There was that affair in your youth-that poor boy who was transported.”

"Oh, yes, yes," I said quickly, "but that was long ago.”

I did not want to think of Dickon. He had been coming more and more into my thoughts lately, and I had often tried to visualize what sort of life he might be living in Virginia.

When I told Sabrina that she was coming to live with me she said in an offhand way, "Am I?”

"You needn't, you know, if you don't want to.”

"I'll think about it," she said.

I was surprised and a little hurt, because I had thought she would be so pleased, for I knew it was what she wanted. She had been so badly hurt that the only way she could find a little balm to lay on her wounds was in hurting others-even those whom, in her heart, she cared for.

"You must decide quickly," I said. "Preparations will have to be made, and I have to get back soon.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

"All right, then," I said. "You can stay here. I daresay you could go and live with your grandmother.”

"I'll come," she said ungraciously.

I spoke to Smith. He was very unhappy. His life had been with Jeremy for so long, but he was brave and philosophical. He said, "He would never have settled down without her. The difference she made in his life was just staggering. I know. I was with him. I remember her first coming-right from that time she changed him. He couldn't have gone on without her. It's best ... the way it's happened. Best for the nipper in a way too. If you take her, you'll bring her back to what she ought to be. I know you can do it, Miss Clarissa... .”

He himself would go and live in a little cottage by the sea. He'd take Damon with him. "He'll be able to run about on the beach and I'll have the sound of the sea with me always. I'll like that.”

So when I left Eversleigh I took Sabrina with me.

Mysterious Disappearance

It was a strange and uneasy year which followed. My life seemed to be dominated by Sabrina. She was difficult sometimes determined, it seemed, not to forget her wounds; they had gone very deep. I knew this because she often had nightmares and would cry out in her sleep. I had her in a room next to the one I shared with Lance, and I became as mothers are with their babies and heard her slightest cry.

Then I would slip out of bed and go to her. It was usually some nightmare. She would be skating on a pond, or she would be getting into a grave because she had given her life to one of the people who had risen from the dead. Every disturbance was due to that experience. I would hold her tightly to me and whisper words of comfort and when she clung to me I knew how she relied on me and how necessary it was for me to lead her away from that which had affected her so deeply; and it seemed to me during those nocturnal sessions that I could do it and I only.

Nanny Curlew had come with us. She was good with Sabrina-kind and firm-and she was pleased to come because she looked on Sabrina as her special charge and she could join her cousin, Nanny Goswell. Jean-Louis was Nanny Goswell's special delight, and he was growing into a charming little boy. He was cheerful and good-tempered, bright and intelligent."My little man," Nanny Goswell called him.

The two nannies would sit together, one knitting, one tatting endlessly, and discuss Miss Sabrina and "my little man." I thought it was good to have children in the nursery.

I did not need Jeanne to point out to me that there was a certain camaraderie between Lance and Aimee. They both had that intense interest in gambling; and my aversion to it meant that I did not share in the most important factor in my husband's life.

Sometimes I wondered whether I should make an attempt to be interested in it. Then I realized how foolish that would be. I did not know the state of his affairs; he never discussed them with me, and if I enquired, he courteously dodged the issue.

But I could not believe that he had successfully avoided financial embarrassment-and if he had, there must come a time when it caught up with him. I would be ready then to rescue him, but I did not intend to dissipate my fortune meanwhile.

I was, I found, thinking more and more frequently of Dickon, and as the time passed I suppose I built up an idealized picture of him. I liked to contemplate what would have happened if he had not been caught and transported. Suppose we had married.

I looked longingly into a life of blissful content.