She made up her mind to go to the housekeeper's room. It was situated in that wing of the house which Kitty had once learnt to know only too well. For some reason or other Hugo had insisted lately upon the servants taking up their sleeping quarters in this wing; and although Mrs. Shairp, who had returned to Netherglen upon his marriage, protested that it was very inconvenient—"because no sound from the other side of the house could reach their ears"—(how well Kitty remembered her saying this!) yet even she had been obliged to give way to Hugo's will.
Kitty went to the door that communicated with the wing. She turned the handle: it would not open. She shook it, and even knocked, but she dared not make much noise. It was not a door that could be fastened or unfastened from inside. Someone in the main part of the house, therefore, must necessarily have turned the key and taken it away. One thing was evident: the servants had been locked into their own rooms, and it was quite impossible for Mrs. Shairp to come to her mistress's room, unless the person who fastened the door came and unfastened it again.
"I wonder that he did not lock me in," said Kitty to herself, wringing her little hands as she came hopelessly down the great staircase into the hall, and then up again to her own room. She had no doubt but that it was Hugo who had done this thing for some end of his own. "What does he mean? What is it that he does not want us to know?"
She reached her own room as she asked this question of herself. The door resisted her hand as the door of the servants' wing had done. It was locked, too. Hugo—or someone else—had turned the key, thinking that she was safe in her own room, and wishing to keep her a prisoner until morning.
Kitty's blood ran cold. Something was wrong: some dark intention must be in Hugo's mind, or he would not have planned so carefully to keep the household out of Mrs. Luttrell's room. She remembered that she had seen a light in a bed-room near Hugo's own—the room where Stevens usually slept. Should she rouse him and ask for his assistance? No: she knew that this man was a mere tool of Hugo's; she could not trust him to help her against her husband's will. There was nothing for it but to do what she could, without help from anyone. She would be brave for Mrs. Luttrell's sake, although she had not been brave for her own.
Oh, why had she not made her warning to Vivian a little stronger? Why had Brian Luttrell not come home that night to Netherglen? It was too late to expect him now.
Her heart beat fast and her hands trembled, but she went resolutely enough to the dressing-room from which Hugo had done his best to exclude her. The door was slightly ajar: oh wonderful good fortune! and the fire was out. The room was in darkness; and the door leading into Mrs. Luttrell's apartment stood open—she had a full view of its warmly lighted space.
She remained motionless for a few minutes: then seeing her opportunity, she glided behind the thick curtain that screened the window. Here she could see the great white bed with its heavy hangings of crimson damask, and the head of the sick woman in its frilled cap lying on the pillows: she could see also her husband's face and figure, as he stood beside the little table on which Mrs. Luttrell's medicine bottles were usually kept, and she shivered at the sight.
His face wore its craftiest and most sinister expression. His eyes were narrowed like those of a cat about to spring: the lines of his face were set in a look of cruel malice, which Kitty had learned to know. What was he doing? He had a tumbler in one hand, and a tiny phial in the other: he was measuring out some drops of a fluid into the glass.
He set down the little bottle on the table, and held up the tumbler to the light. Then he took a carafe and poured a tea-spoonful of water on the liquid. Kitty could see the phial on the table very distinctly. It bore in red letters the inscription: "Poison." And again she asked herself: what was Hugo going to do?