The Unsuspected Read Online Free PDF

she'd answered with a proud tolerance, biting back the cry, But so was I! But so was I! And still, in April, her heart was crying. But so was I!  
     
    "Won't it be wonderful to see all our friends?" sighed Mrs. Stevens. "Just think; any minute. Won't you come around to the other side, Miss Frazier, dear?"
     
    Mathilda said desperately, "Won't you please excuse me?"
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     Mathilda's luggage didn't keep her long. She seemed hardly to have begun to remember how to stand up on land, when they were finished with her. She was through customs, standing in another lightning storm of cameras, and a tall man had come up to her with a protective air.
     
    Blinded, Mathilda couldn't quite see his face, but she heard a strange, kind voice saying close to her ear, "Grandy let me come." Her eyes filled with tears of relief. She felt a gush of emotion, a sense of coming home.
     
    The red-haired newsman saw her falter and begin to cry; saw the tall man, with a kind swoop of his whole body that seemed to surround her and guard her, guide her quickly through the groups of people and put her into a cab, very neatly, very fast. The red-
    haired man ran his tongue around an upper molar. He might have been sneering.
     
    Mathilda stumbled into the taxi. It took her a minute to find a handkerchief. The man beside her, with an odd effect of pure and scientific curiosity said, "Why is it they call Althea the beautiful one?"
     
    "Because she is, of course," said Mathilda in honest surprise. Now she could see his face. It wasn't a face she had ever seen before. He was dark—dark hair, weathered skin. His eyes were dark, with heavy lashes. He had the kind of nose that suggests good humor,
    not in the least chiseled or sharp, but boyish looking. His chin was firm. His face was thin, with no puffs of flesh. It was a formed face, the face of a man who had been, somehow, tested, although he was young. His eyebrows went up at an angle toward
    his temples. There was something gay about the way they flew when he smiled.
     
    He spoke again before she had time to form a question. "Grandy would have come down. He wanted to. But he thought it would only complicate the publicity part."
     
    Into her mind flitted the memory of the red-haired man and what he'd said. But the thought flitted out again. "Where are we going?"
     
    "To a hotel. I have to pick up my stuff. And I want very much to talk to you."
     
    He did have a nice smile. But it came over Mathilda, just the same, that all this was rather strange. Grandy's mere name had been enough for that moment on the pier. But now she drew a little away, shrinking back into her own corner of the taxicab.
     
    "I want to talk to you quite seriously," he was continuing. She began to feel alarmed. He said lightly, "I'm afraid your Mr. Grandison has been up to some plain and fancy dirty work."
     
    Mathilda took a deep breath. Her green eyes opened wider.
     
    The man said, "I don't know where to start I suppose it began with Jane—but of course you don't know Jane."
     
    "I don't know you," said Mathilda coldly. "Will you please ask the man to take us to the station? I would like to go to Mr. Grandison's house by the first train."
     
    He looked as if he hadn't quite taken in what she said. He sat still. If he'd been in a movie, you'd have assumed that the film had stuck. His eyes remained interested and alert. He made no move to redirect the cab driver.
     
    "I haven't the faintest idea who you are," said Mathilda angrily, "and you may as well know that I will not listen to your opinions of Mr. Grandison. Since I've never seen you before in my life, I am perfectly sure you can't know Mr. Grandison anything like as well
    as I do. And you ought to know better than to think you can run him down to me."
     
    He said nothing. Something about his pose collapsed just a little as if a little air had gone out of a balloon. There was a small crumpling.
     
    Mathilda was mad as hops. This was no