Read "The Crystal Cup" by Gertrude Atherton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The tide was coming in. Gita realized that she was cold and rather tired. She ran along the beach to quicken her blood, then took a trolley to the mainland. As she walked up the avenue of the manor she saw a motor standing before the door of the house and hoped she would be able to slip upstairs to her room unseen. The elderly and middle-aged daughters of her grandmother's contemporaries did not interest her and she was inclined to pay little heed to the old lady's adhortations to lose no time making friends in her new life. She had been at the manor a month and not met anyone of her own age. Few of any other. She saw her grandmother in brief interviews only, for the nurse maintained that this alien relative excited the invalid.
As she was stepping carefully over the old rugs of the hall she sniffed a familiar aroma, and then observed that the door of the drawing-room was open, and that a blind had evidently been raised. She had entered this room only once, on the day after her arrival, when curiosity had led her to explore the cradle of her ancestors. She had felt no inclination to visit it again. It was immense and dark and dreary, paneled with mahogany to the ceiling and crowded with ill-assorted furniture representing every period from 1660 to 1880. She assumed that her grandmother's funeral would be held in its musty grandeur and after that it would be less inviting than ever.