Snow Shadow by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online Page B

without looking back.
    Miss Elizabeth sighted me. If she was disturbed at a witness, she did not show it.

    “You are going out, Miss Jansen?” Was that a quiet hint that the sooner I took myself off the better?
    “For dinner.” I was eager to be away. “Is there a restaurant within walking distance, Miss Austin? I would like to be back early.”
    “There is a McDonald’s two blocks over. Or the Humbolt. That is one block west and three down. Mr. Donner is fond of that. Oh,” she said as I opened the door, “there is Anne’s luggage.”
    Since Miss Elizabeth was moving forward as if to collect the bags, I did what I would not have done for their owner—I handed them within. But after the door closed, I was glad to be out. The warm comfort and security the house had seemed to offer at first was near gone. I spattered through slush and glanced aloft at massing clouds. I must make up my mind and move, as soon as I decently could.
    When I entered the Humbolt, I was glad of my choice. It looked as if it had been remodeled from an old barn, and because I was early I had a good choice of tables. My selection was a booth to one side, out of the line of any draft from the doors.
    The prices quoted on the menu were high, but I thought I deserved a treat. Only when I had given my order did I hear the murmur of voices from the booth ahead of mine.
    “—dead. You’ll have to do something—” Low and masculine.
    “Just give me time. I have a plan. Just you be at—” a feminine voice arose and then dropped again.
    The waiter brought me salad, then the party before me hailed him. I would not have seen the speakers,had not my napkin slipped to the floor. As I made a grab for it I caught sight of a coat which could not easily be forgotten. That hideous black and white plaid was the one Irene Frimsbee had worn Saturday night.
    So Irene had a meeting here with a man whom I had not seen. The “death”—Mrs. Horvath’s?
    I lingered as long as I could, for I disliked the prospect of the cold walk back. But most of all, though there was no real reason for that, I dreaded to return to that house. Only I would not intrude on Theodosia in spite of her invitation.
    Marriage—what led people to marry then find themselves duped? Did Theodosia regret hers? It was simply that I sensed hers was not an easy household. Even I might have faced such a situation had—that thought I determinedly pushed away.
    It was only seven, but I had plenty to read and a good lamp in my room. So I plowed back once more through the slush. Coming in from the cold, I was aware of a cloying odor of flowers—and glanced apprehensively at the closed doors of the parlor. No funeral home for the Austins—Miss Elizabeth was keeping to the once well-known pattern of a lying-instate. But the problems of the family were not mine.
    When I reached my room, sleet beat against the window. I looked over my books, but I could not settle down to research reading tonight. On the drum table near the fireplace was what I should have expected to find in this house: a full set of Jane Austen’s ironical romances.
    Emma, so esteemed by many critics, was never to my taste. Pride and Prejudice I knew too well for it tohold me when I was disturbed. My hand hovered between the glorious fun of Northanger Abbey and the quieter Persuasion. It was Anne Elliot’s renunciation, and the ten-year-after satisfying reward, which I chose. Those passing years—I was not going to think of my hopeless five. I opened the book:
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage—
    The familiar magic held. I read on, forgetting my uneasy qualms. But before I went to bed I left the hall door slightly ajar. Having been reared in a household where bedrooms were seldom closed, I found it claustrophobia to be shut in.
    There was a dim radiance in the hall from the head of the stairs, but most of, the corridor was