Читать книгу Mrs. Gailey онлайн

5 страница из 78

She evidently expected this name to convey something, but as it obviously did not, she added, "Your daughter has just engaged me as her secretary."

So that was what she was—not a new-style cook but a new-style secretary—just the sort of person Lesley would engage. . . . As Iris said nothing, the young woman asked, "You are Mrs. Winrow, aren't you?"

"I am, but my daughter hasn't told me anything about you. She's inclined to be secretive about her personal affairs, and as it happens, I'm very seldom in the country. I spend most of my time at our house in town."

She hoped the young woman would stop talking. She felt tired, and it might be half an hour before Elphinstone arrived with his car. She did not want to have to sit all that time talking about Lesley and her crackbrained schemes. She thoroughly disliked the looks of the new secretary. She was common—not a lady, not a bit like the secretaries she sometimes saw in the houses of her friends. She looked neither immaculate nor discreet. She looked just another of those queer women whom Lesley perversely preferred to those she met in her mother's drawing room. The secretary could not, however, be aware of these deficiencies, for she smiled and said in the friendliest way, "What a pretty dress you're wearing."