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flung over a neighboring chair, while my hostess had a mug of coffee to my hand before I had a chance to think.
    “Listen.” Theodosia assembled a plate of scrambled eggs taken from a covered heating pan, inserted bread into a toaster, and then seated herself across from me, pushing salt and pepper nearer. “I’ve got myself into something.”
    She did not look directly at me, but fiddled with a pot of marmalade, pushing it out and then drawing it back again. “You know, I’m working on the old Kitteridgecase. It has all the elements of the wildest melodrama. And there’s good chance of it going not only for a book, but for a TV special. God knows we need the advance and that sale, if Lottie can make it for us. She phoned yesterday, before the party, and my deadline is advanced if I want the TV chance. Two months ago I tried to get an interview with the lawyer who handles what is left of the Kitteridge property. I need to see the house, naturally—the geography of the place is a part of the general story. He has been stalling, then this morning, at the crack of dawn practically, I get a call that he is going on a trip of inspection there and will clear it for me to take a look around.
    “It’s a hundred miles from here, and in this kind of weather I’m not going to try to make a round trip in????? one day. I couldn’t, anyway, and see all I want to????? Gordon is tied up, and the fact is I don’t like traveling alone. Would you be willing to tag along? It would be for two, maybe three, days, and, after all, the whole story is in your period, too. It’s a chance to see the place and I don’t think anyone has for years, unless this Johnson trots out there by himself from time to time.”
    I felt as if I had been handed the trip to England I had always longed for. The Kitteridge legend of family disgrace, murder, and mystery was known to me, yes. And to see the actual site, with Theodosia who was writing about it, was a chance I could hardly believe I would ever have.
    “Oh—yes—!”
    I made a hurried breakfast, dashed back to cram what might be needed for a short trip into my ever-ex-pandableflight bag, and was ready for Theodosia before an hour had passed, leaving a note for Miss Elizabeth, whom I had yet to see, enclosing the promised prepaid rent and explaining my absence.
    We did have three days, exciting for both of us. It was on the way back that Theodosia spoke abruptly.
    “I hate to go back. There’s something about that place which seems wrong.”
    That she spoke of the carriage house, I understood. But her words also evoked for me the Abbey, and I, too, experienced a reluctance. It was now as if I returned from a vacation into bondage, the same slightly shrinking feeling I had always had before the life Aunt Otilda decreed had again closed about me after some very brief escape.
    “The Austins—at least Miss Elizabeth—” I ventured, “almost seem as if they were living in another age.”
    “They are. Time stopped for them at least fifty years ago!” she flashed back. “I gather that the old boy, Dr. Edward, was one of those domestic tyrants such as stud Victorian novels and give satisfaction to modern researchers. He married beneath him, according to the canons of his clan and time, when he married old Polchek’s daughter. And I gather he never let her forget it. There were four daughters, no sons.
    “Elizabeth was the oldest, then there was Elinor born a good ten years later, Emma, two years younger, and finally Anne. Elinor was the black sheep. She was crossed out of the family Bible when she eloped with Harlan Blackmur.”
    “Eloped?” I tried to connect such an exploit withthe grim, time-embedded luxury of the Abbey. Yes, an elopement might even figure there.
    “It was because of the theater,” Theodosia continued. “Edward was completely immersed in his Austeniana research. He spent most of Tillie’s cash on that. Finally young Blackmur—he was acting as Edward’s secretary