"I don't want nothing, miss," said the young man, in a voice quite unlike his own. "It's very kind of you, but the only thing I want just now is to be let be."
Had Mr. Jukes or any of her other lodgers made that speech it would have seemed uncivil, but Miss Foldal knew that Mr. Harper was incapable of any kind of intentional rudeness. He was as gentle as a child. Perhaps that was why the look now in his eyes hurt her so much.
Without saying anything else, the young man went up to his bedroom.
Time passed. The supper hour came and went. Mr. Jukes did not return and Mr. Harper did not come down again. But it was this latter fact that disconcerted the landlady. She could not get the look of those eyes out of her brain. Only once had she seen such a look in the eyes of any human being, and that was in those of her Uncle Frederick just before he destroyed himself.
Nine struck. There was no sound from the room above. Miss Foldal grew horribly afraid. Memories of her Uncle Frederick had descended very grimly upon her.
Perhaps Mr. Harper had gone to bed. She hoped and believed that he had. And yet she could not be sure. It was her duty to go up to his room and inquire. But it was too much for her nerves to be quite alone in the house. Ethel, the maid-servant, had gone out shopping as it was Saturday night, and Mr. Jukes had not yet come in for his supper.
Miss Foldal was not a brave woman. Her deepest instinct was against going up those stairs. It was much to her credit that she did go up at a quarter past nine. The door of Mr. Harper's room was shut, but a light was coming from under it.
She knocked so timidly that a mouse would not have heard her.
No answer.
She knocked again, a little louder, as she imagined, but no louder in reality.