Read "Suspense" by Isabel Ostrander online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Betty was seated before her mirror, gazing somewhat doubtfully from the small round box of rouge in her hand to her wan reflection. Dare she hope successfully to conceal the ravages of a sleepless, tortured night? Her cheeks and very lips were blanched and her eyes sunken and heavily circled. Only the birthmark, like a scarlet stain, glowed sullenly and served but to accentuate her pallor. It were better by far that her employer's keen eyes should note a condition which she could attribute to illness than that her effort to conceal it would be so palpable as to invite suspicion of a graver nature.
How she had managed to reach her room after the shock of her tragic discovery, she could not have told. No memory remained with her of that swift silent flight from the room of death. She only knew that she found herself back in bed once more, trembling in every limb and with an icy, pulseless void in her breast where her heart had been. Reason itself seemed to have fled, and her thoughts become a whirling phantasmagoria of horror in which but one thing stood out as if stamped indelibly upon her mind: the face of the slain man.