She took up the telephone, but had to wait, receiver at ear, several minutes before the Lontaine's number answered. Then a voice with a drowsy sound, like a tired and husky imitation of Fanny's: "Yes? Hello! who is it?" And when Lucinda made herself known a brief stammer prefaced a shift to honeyed accents: "Oh! is it you, Cindy darling? Heavens! what time is it?"
Lucinda named the hour, heard Fanny give a smothered exclamation, and added: "Did I wake you up?"
"I was simply dead to the world when the telephone rang," Fanny declared with an equivocal giggle. "The poor dear eyes are hardly open even now."
"I'm so sorry, dear. I supposed of course.... Is Harry there?"
The reply came readily and without suggestion of uncertainty: "Why, no, darling: he isn't."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite——"
"I mean," Lucinda persisted, in some perplexity, "if you've just waked up, you've hardly had time to find out."
"Oh!" Fanny interrupted herself with an uneasy laugh. "Oh, but I know he isn't! I ... he ... I mean to say, darling, Harry must have gone out quite early. I mean ... O dear!" An audible yawn and then an apologetic noise. "I'm simply drugged with sleepiness, Cindy. What I'm trying to say is, I was awake when Harry left the house, but went to sleep again. Have you tried the studio? If he isn't there, I'm sure I haven't the remotest notion where he can be." Then with a quite unmistakable accent of apprehension: "Why, darling? is something the matter?"
"I'll explain when I see you," Lucinda temporized—"if you wouldn't mind running round to the hotel when you've had your breakfast."