Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/264

254 And driving up to a neat white cottage of homely, but sufficiently attractive appearance, he stopped.

"This is her house," said he, jumping to the ground; "let’s go in and see what we can do."

Glancing up at the windows, which were all closed save the two on the veranda overlooking the street, I thought to myself, "If she has anybody in hiding here, whose presence in the house she desires to keep secret, it is folly to hope she will take me in, however well recommended I may come." But, yielding to the example of my friend, I alighted in my turn and followed him up the short, grass-bordered walk to the front door.

"As she has no servant, she will come to the door herself, so be ready," he remarked as he knocked.

I had barely time to observe that the curtains to the window at my left suddenly dropped, when a hasty step made itself heard within, and a quick hand drew open the door; and I saw before me the woman whom I had observed at the post-office, and whose action with the letters had struck me as peculiar. I recognized her at first glance, though she was differently dressed, and had evidently passed through some worry or excitement that had altered the expression of her countenance, and made her manner what it was not at that time, strained and a trifle uncertain. But I saw no reason for thinking she remembered me. On the contrary, the look she directed towards me had nothing but inquiry in it, and when Mr. Monell pushed me forward with the remark, "A friend of mine; in fact my lawyer from New York," she dropped a hurried old-fashioned curtsey whose only expression was a manifest desire to appear sensible of the honor conferred upon her, through the mist of a certain trouble that confused everything about her.