The Confession

Name: The Confession
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Pages: about 105
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 1.9 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 64 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

I am not a susceptible woman. I am objective rather than subjective, and a fairly full experience of life has taught me that most of my impressions are from within out rather than the other way about. For instance, obsession at one time a few years ago of a shadowy figure on my right, just beyond the field of vision, was later exposed as the result of a defect in my glasses. In the same way Maggie, my old servant, was during one entire summer haunted by church-bells and considered it a personal summons to eternity until it was shown to be in her inner ear.
Yet the Benton house undeniably made me uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because it had remained unchanged for so long. The old horsehair chairs, with their shiny mahogany frames, showed by the slightly worn places in the carpet before them that they had not deviated an inch from their position for many years. The carpets--carpets that reached to the very baseboards and gave under one's feet with the yielding of heavy padding beneath--were bright under beds and wardrobes, while in the centers of the rooms they had faded into the softness of old tapestry.
Maggie, I remember, on our arrival moved a chair from the wall in the library, and immediately put it back again, with a glance to see if I had observed her.
"It's nice and clean, Miss Agnes," she said. "A--I kind of feel that a little dirt would make it more homelike."
"I'm sure I don't see why," I replied, rather sharply, "I've lived in a tolerably clean house most of my life."
Maggie, however, was digging a heel into the padded carpet. She had chosen a sunny place for the experiment, and a small cloud of dust rose like smoke.

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The Confession

From the opening

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