The House of the Laird by Susan Barrie Page A

Montagu-Jackson with her ornate French bed entirely covered with costly silks and expensive tweed, and Karen realized as soon as she saw them that she had had a new inspiration.
    “I’ve a dressmaker coming here from the village this afternoon—a really excellent dressmaker!—and I thought if you agreed with me that these would make up very nicely we’d get her to take your measurements and see what she can do with them,” Aunt Horry declared, thinking with admiration that the pink performed miracles for her guest’s delicate complexion.
    Karen shook her head almost sadly.
    “You know you’re just trying to be generous again,” she said, “and I can’t let you.”
    “But, my dear girl, why not? If it pleases me? I’m tired of seeing these things lying about in my cupboards, and the tweed will get the moth in it if I don’t do something about it. I thought it would make you a couple of nice skirts, and perhaps a big coat as well. It’s exactly the tweed I would choose for you for a coat.”
    Karen’s blue eyes filled slowly with tears. She wished she could make Aunt Horry know how grateful she really was.
    “ All the same, I can’t let you.”
    “Then I’ll send the whole lot to a jumble sale and be rid of it.”
    After that, of course. Aunt Horry won the day, and the dressmaker arrived to take Karen’s measurements and carried away the lengths of silk, while Aunt Horry insisted upon Karen’s accepting one of the silk evening shawls as a gift.
    “You can wear it over that pretty blue dress of yours,” she said, “and until the others arrive it will ring the changes for you nicely.”
    She patted Karen on the cheek, and said gently: “You know, my dear, I do like having you staying here. You’re so young and different, somehow, from most modern young women. And I want you to be happy. Although I was not at all sure when I first met you, I hope now tha t you really will marry Iain !”
    Iain’s visits at the week-ends were things Karen looked forward to with a blaze of longing in her heart. When he came, although perhaps he was merely friendly to her—even a little distant—she felt weak with relief because he was there. Whilst he was at Craigie House she was constantly worrying lest, perhaps, something might call him away—to Londo n , or even farther afield, and that she felt she could not endure, although she knew that before long she would have to endure doing without him altogether, and that the sooner she was sensible and told him that this sort of thing could not go on any longer, the sooner some sort of peace of mind would be restored to her.
    O nce away from him—once really away from him—she would have to forget him. And when you know you’ve got to tear something by the roots out of your heart, every moment’s delay is merely strengthening the agony when the operation itself takes place. She knew that if she had any pity on herself she would turn her back on Auchenwiel and Craigie with as little delay as possible and fly back to London, obscurity and work.
    A nd perhaps if she worked hard enough at something she disliked she might forget these past weeks altogether...
    She made up her mind that the next time she saw Iain she would have this matter out with him, and explain that in her view the deception they were practicing had already gone on long enough. So far as she could see he was not in any serious need of protection from his former fiancée , although how he secretly felt about her she often wondered. Fiona was so beautiful; assured, and a little mysterious, but apparently quite willing to be nothing more than friends with him now that at last she had come back into his life. To Karen she was quite charming, which seemed to prove that she had n o secret designs on the man she had once proposed to marry. Sometimes Karen had the odd feeling that, if anything, she was a little too charming, and there were moments when the younger girl asked herself why— why, if Fiona was no