“Mr. Kimball’s room must be opened,” she said; “can you do it, Hollis?”
“Not alone, Miss Henrietta. Shall I get the chauffeur?”
“Yes, and quickly. Meantime I’m going upstairs myself. Come up as soon as you can get Oscar.”
Slowly Henrietta Webb mounted the two flights of stairs to her brother’s room. A strange, thoughtful look was on her handsome face.
Not a young woman was Miss Webb, indeed she was three years older than Kimball, who was thirty. But she was what is known as well-preserved, and every detail of her perfect grooming spoke of a determination to look her best at any expense of time, trouble or money.
A tradition in the Webb family was that “haste” is a word unknown to a lady. It may have been the observance of this that caused the lagging footsteps, but to an onlooker it would have appeared that Henrietta Webb was thinking with a rapidity in inverse proportion to her movements.
At Kimball’s door, the door from the hall into the front room on the third floor, she paused, and stood looking at it with a sort of fascination. What lay behind it? Tragedy?—or merely the comedy of over sleeping?
“If it should be!” she murmured, in an irrepressible whisper, and her hands clinched into one another, as if in expression of some strong emotion.
“Can’t you rouse him, Miss Webb?” asked Hollis, solicitously, as he and the chauffeur came upstairs two or three steps at a bound.
“I—I haven’t tried,” said Henrietta, dully. “I—I’m afraid—”