Garth of Tregillis by Henrietta Reid Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes fixed on the ground as though searching for something. I was puzzled that I had not seen her before, then as I studied the towering boulders I could see deeper shadows indented in the rock. There would be caves there. Perhaps the girl had been investigating one of them when I had arrived and that was the reason I hadn’t seen her. She seemed to be completely unaware of my presence, for she walked until the strand curved sharply towards the rocks, occasionally bending down, picking something up and placing it in a fishing basket that she carried over her shoulder.
    It was when she reached the tip of the strand and turned to retrace her steps that she looked up and I saw that she was a woman of about thirty, her dark, luxuriant hair slightly touched with grey. When she caught sight of me her face lit up. She hurried towards me and I noticed for the first time that she limped.
    ‘I thought I was alone. I didn’t expect you to find your way to the cove so quickly.’
    ‘Then you know I’m staying at Tregillis!’
    I sounded surprised, and she laughed delightedly at my astonishment. ‘Why, of course—you’re Judith Westall. Paul told me all about you. I’m Verity Brett: I keep house for Paul and his father.’ She pointed along the coast. ‘Their house is about a mile from here—near the tin mine.’
    I glanced curiously at her basket. ‘What are you collecting?
    Shells?’
    ‘No, stones.’
    ‘Stones?’ I echoed.
    She laughed. ‘I expect you’re thinking I’m one of the local oddities, but actually, although they look very drab now, they polish up quite beautifully. I’ve a machine for that kind of thing.
    It’s a sanding machine and you’d be amazed how well the colours come up when they’re polished.’ She reached in her basket and held out a handful of small pebbles irregularly shaped and to my eye extremely unattractive-looking—duns and browns and pale yellow.
    ‘Yes, I know they look terrible,’ she said, correctly interpreting my look of disappointment, ‘but you’d really be astonished how different they’ll seem after being sanded for two days.’
    ‘Two days?’ I said.
    ‘Yes, you must come along some time. I keep my machine in an outhouse. It makes a dreadful din, but Paul and his father are very patient. I expect,’ she added with a little grin of amusement, ‘’it’s because I’m an excellent cook, so they put up with me.’ But I guessed from her manner that she was deeply attached to Paul and his father. Maybe perhaps more to Paul, I surmised. I had seen how her eyes had lit up when she had even mentioned his name.
    ‘But what do you do with them once they’re polished?’ I asked.
    To me it seemed a rather pointless occupation, and she must have guessed at my lack of enthusiasm, for she laughed and said a little mischievously, ‘Now you’re certain I’m one of the local eccentrics.’ Actually I make them into jewellery. I buy the mounts and make necklaces, bracelets and rings. They go quite well during the season,’ she added, a little proudly, and I guessed that her talent compensated her to a certain extent for her disability.
    As we spoke we strolled towards the boat-house and I glanced in curiously, but although I pressed my head close I couldn’t see beyond the dust-engrimed window.
    ‘No one uses the boat-house now,’ Verity said quietly. ‘Mr.
    Seaton hasn’t taken out the sloop since the accident.’

    Mr. Seaton! For a moment I was puzzled, then I realized she was speaking about Garth. Strange how I already thought of him as Garth. She spoke his name with a sort of reverence and I guessed that she, like others in this part of the world, looked up to him as a sort of feudal overlord, and the thought annoyed me slightly. Garth Seaton would not find this subservience towards his position in me, I resolved.
    Verity let the stones slip through her fingers. ‘It was dreadful,’
    she said with a little shudder. ‘I’ll never forget Paul’s face when he