Wheel of Stars Read Free Page B

herself towait until her heart stopped beating so fast, rubbing her mittens across her face, wondering why she was shaking so. This whole encounter seemed to have a serious meaning which she did not understand. She swallowed twice and started towards town at a brisk but steady pace, trying to concentrate on the day ahead and not what was immediately behind her.
    Still all morning, though Gwennan strove to occupy herself only with what was to be done, her thoughts showed an unfortunate tendency to wander. She had to resolutely keep her back to the shelf of those books which were her own private research materials. She had seen those markings. That fact was far more important than the disturbing meeting with Mr. Lyle. Was he going to remain at Lyle House? If so, would she ever have another chance to complete her own investigations at the stone? The swing from hope to disappointment made her more unhappy than she could ever remember before. She might have been bodily pulled out of her neat little shell of a life, in which she had always been so sheltered and comfortable. Now she was being made to venture into the strange and unknown which she had always shunned, unless it lay on the printed page where it could be safely confined and enclosed when one wanted no more of brain-taxing questions and speculations for awhile.
    Gwennan sat at her desk and found herself drawing over and over those strange lines which curved or hooked (were they subconsciously remembered from the morning’s half sighting—or just what her imagination was offering her?). Shecrumpled the paper, threw it forcibly into the waste basket, then made herself select the books for the school class due in this afternoon.
    Yet memory clung. She felt a prickling of skin, an unease, as if some dreaded action lay before her. Though she sternly told herself that this was a very stupid piece of self-delusion, as she would eventually prove.

2
    Gwennan unlocked the library door promptly at twelve-thirty for old Mr. Staines who shuffled with a grunt of greeting to his chosen chair near the register. There followed a flurry of children on their way back to school. Her attention was fully captured by their demands. A half hour later Lady Lyle came in, her slim body muffled in that same soft dark green-gray cloak she had worn in the early morning. In the full light of the room Gwennan could see the hollows in the older woman’s pale cheeks, making more prominent her well-formed nose, and the ridges of delicate bones. She looked more fragile than the girl had remembered her from only the week before. Had she been ill? Still she walked as firmly as ever, held herself proudly erect. Was she coming to face Gwennan with the sin of trespassing?
    However, she spoke with a note of warmth the girl had not expected:
    “It seems odd after all these years not to see Miss Nessa,” she said. They might have been friends, comfortable in a long-held relationship.Still those smiling lips were blueish—was she perhaps a heart patient—? Though who really knew anything about the Lyles? Now she produced a list, holding it out to Gwennan.
    “I cannot hope, I fear, to find any of these on the shelves, they are perhaps too specialized in subject matter. However, Miss Nessa once told me that there exists a system of ordering books from other libraries, to be read on loan—”
    Gwennan studied the spiky writing which at first glance seemed almost to be in some foreign language, until under close examination it became more intelligible. As she read, her first faint uneasiness strengthened. Was this list a subtle method of informing her that she had not only been discovered trespassing, but that the reason for her morning invasion of Lyle land had been guessed? She made herself pick up her pen and check four of the six lines on that scrap of paper.
    “These are already here—on loan. It may be possible to extend that—”
    “How very fortunate!”
    Was she being subtly baited? Best make sure