"Mercedes Lackey - EM 1 - The Fire Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

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arm of the chair to keep from falling. The Professor was instantly out of his seat and at her
side, taking her hand and patting it ineffectually. But his words showed a surprising streak of
practicality.
"Child, when did you eat last?" he demanded. She shook her head, unable to remember-and that, in
itself, was disturbing. Was she losing her memory? Was she losing her mind? "I haven't had much
appetite," she prevaricated.
He snorted. "Then that is the second order of business; the first is to get you away from here. Go
upstairs and pack your things; I'm not leaving you here to be jeered at by tradesmen a moment
longer."
"But-" she protested, knowing his own resources were slender. He cut her off at the single word,
showing an unexpected streak of authority.
"I can certainly afford to put the daughter of my old friend up in a respectable boarding-house
for a few days, and take her to dinner too. And as for the rest well, that was what I came here to
speak to you about, and that would be best done over dinner, or rather, dessert. Now, don't argue
with me, child!" he scolded. "I won't have you staying here! The next thing you know, they'll
probably cut off the gas."
At just that moment, the gaslights flickered and went out, all over the house, leaving them in the
grey gloom of the overcast day, the uncertain and haunted hour before sunset. Suddenly, the house
seemed full of ghosts. If nothing else, that decided her.
"I'll just be a moment," she said, truthfully, since most of her belongings were already packed
into a carpetbag and a single trunk, with only a valise waiting to receive the rest. Mr. Grumwelt
had watched her with his nasty, beady eyes, like a serpent watching a bird, the entire time she
packed; presumably to make sure that she did not pack up something that no longer belonged to her.
Fortunately he did not recognize the value of some of the keepsakes she had managed to retain, or
he would doubtless have confiscated them as well. He had made it very clear to her that anything
she carried away, she did so on his sufferance. The trunk already stood in the hall; she had only
to finish packing her valise and carpetbag. "I find myself in the position so many philosophers
like Mr. Emerson profess to admire-unburdened by possessions."
"I'll get a cab," the Professor replied.
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Bergdorf's was not crowded at this time of the early evening; the theater crowd had not yet begun
to arrive. Fortunately, the German restaurant had never been one of her father's choices for
dining out, or the memories the place evoked would have been too painful to permit her to eat. No,
she had no sad ghosts waiting for her here, and Bergdorf's was clearly professor Cathcart's
favorite, for the waiters all recognized him and they were shown to a secluded table out of the
way of traffic. She wondered what they made of her; too plain to be a member of the demimonde, too
shabbily dressed to be a fiancee or a relative. Did they assume she was his housekeeper, being
granted a birthday treat?
Perhaps they take me for a suffragette relation, or one who has a religious mania and has given
all her worldly goods to Billy Sunday. No matter. The respect they accorded to Professor Cathcart
extended even to such peculiar females as he chose to bring with him; service was prompt and
polite, and the headwaiter treated her with the deference that might be accorded to one who wore a
gown by Worth, rather than one from the cheaper pages of Sears and Roebuck.
She had once worn fine gowns not by Worth, perhaps, but by one of the better Chicago seamstresses.
That had been before her father's run of bad luck with his investments, and she had chosen to
economize on her gowns as well as in other household matters. It had not mattered to her teachers
and fellow students; they probably would not have noticed unless she had donned the chiton and
stola of an ancient Greek maiden, and perhaps not even then. Her economies had gone unremarked,