Read Online The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough - Free Book Online Page A

enjoyment alone.
    “Aren’t you going to tell her she may read romances?” Octavia asked instead.
    “Certainly not! If I did that, it would remove most of her pleasure, you know. Pure freedom to read them would only give her sufficient detachment to see how dreadful they are.” Drusilla frowned. “What intrigues me is how Missy managed to persuade Livilla of all people to let her borrow them. But I can’t ask Livilla without letting the cat out of the bag, and I wouldn’t spoil Missy’s fun for the world. I see it as a wee bit of defiance, and that gives me hope that there’s some starch in Missy’s backbone after all.”
    Octavia sniffed. “I can’t see anything laudable about a sort of defiance that necessitates her becoming underhanded !”
    A small sound halfway between a growl and a mew escaped Drusilla’s lips, but then she smiled, shrugged, and led the way into the kitchen.
    Drusilla accompanied Missy to the doctor the following Friday morning. They went off on foot in good time, warmly clad – naturally – in brown.
    The surgery waiting room, dim and fusty, was empty. Mrs. Neville Hurlingford, who did service as her husband’s nurse, ushered them into it with a cheery word for Drusilla and a rather blank stare for Missy. A moment later, the doctor poked his head round his consulting room door.
    “Come in, Missy. No, Drusilla, you can stay there and talk to your aunt.”
    Missy went in, sat down, and waited warily, her guard up.
    He commenced with a frontal attack. “I do not believe you were merely short of breath,” he said. “There had to be pain, and I want to hear all about it, and no nonsense.”
    Missy gave in, told him about the stitch in her left side, the way it only bothered her on long walks if she hurried, and the way it had ushered in that sudden, terrifying onslaught of severe pain and breathlessness.
    So he examined her again, and afterwards sighed. “I can find absolutely nothing the matter with you,” he said. “When I examined you last Monday there were no residual signs to indicate heart trouble, and today is the same. However, from what Mr. Smith told me, you certainly did have some sort of genuine turn. So, just to make sure, I’m going to send you to a specialist in Sydney. If I can arrange an appointment, would you like to go down with Alicia on her weekly Tuesday trip to the city? It would save your mother having to go.”
    Was there an understanding twinkle in his eyes? Missy wasn’t sure, but she looked at him gratefully all the same. “Thank you, I’d like to go with Alicia.”
    In fact, Friday was a very good day, for in the afternoon Una drove up to Missalonghi in Livilla’s horse and sulky, and she had half a dozen novels with her, discreetly wrapped in plain brown paper.
    “I didn’t even know you were ill until Mrs. Neville Hurlingford told me this morning in the library,” she said, sitting down in the best parlour, to which Octavia had ushered her, dazzled by her elegance and composure.
    Neither Drusilla nor Octavia offered to let the two young women talk alone, not because they were consciously spoilsporting, but because they were always starved for company, especially when the company took the form of a brand new face. Such a lovely face too! Not beautiful like Alicia, yet – disloyal though the thought was, they fancied Una was perhaps the more alluring of the two. Her arrival pleased Drusilla particularly, since it answered the vexed question as to how Missy was suddenly managing to borrow novels.
    “Thank you for the books,” said Missy, smiling at her friend. “The one I brought home last Monday is nearly worn out.”
    “Did you enjoy it?” asked Una.
    “Oh, very much!” As indeed she had; its dying heroine with her dicky heart could not have come at a more appropriate moment. Admittedly the heroine actually had managed to die in her beloved’s arms, but she, Missy, had had the good fortune merely almost to die in her beloved’s