第157章

I think he knew all about it long ago. You can ask him what he has been doing: you must have heard the masons!"

"I hope I shall not stumble into anything like a story, for if I do I must out with everything!"

In the afternoon, Davie was full of the curious little place his father had discovered behind the wall; but, if that was the lost room, he said, it was not at all worth making such a fuss about: it was nothing but a big closet, with an old desk-kind of thing in it!

In the afternoon also, the earl went to see his niece. It was the first time they met after his rude behaviour on her proposal to search for the lost room.

"What were you doing this morning, uncle?" she said. "There was such a thumping and banging somewhere in the castle! Davie said you were determined, he thought, to find the lost room."

"Nothing of the kind, my love," answered the earl. "--I do hope they will not spoil the stair carrying the stones and mortar down!"

"What was it then, uncle?"

"Simply this, my dear: my late wife, your aunt, and I, had a plan for taking that closet behind my room on the stair into the room itself. In preparation, I had a wall built across the middle of the closet, so as to divide it and make two recesses of it, and act also as a buttress to the weakened wall. Then your aunt died, and I hadn't the heart to open the recesses or do anything more in the matter. So one half of the closet was cut off, and remained inaccessible. But there had been left in it an old bureau, containing papers of some consequence, for it was heavy, and intended to occupy the same position after the arches were opened.

Now, as it happens, I want one of those papers, so the wall has had to come down again."

"But, uncle, what a pity!" said Arctura. "Why did you not open the arches? The recesses would have been so pretty in that room!"

"I am sorry I did not think of asking you what you would like done about it, my child! The fact is I never thought of your taking any interest in the matter; I had naturally lost all mine. You will please to observe, however, I have only restored what I had myself disarranged--not meddled with anything belonging to the castle!"

"But now you have the masons here, why not go on, and make a little search for the lost room?" said Arctura, venturing once more.

"We might pull down the castle and be none the wiser! Bah! the building up of half the closet may have given rise to the whole story!"

"Surely, uncle, the legend is older than that!"

"It may be; you cannot be sure. Once a going, it would immediately cry back to a remote age. Prove that any one ever spoke of it before the building of that foolish wall."

"Surely some remember hearing it long before that!"

"Nothing is more treacherous than a memory confronted with a general belief," said the earl, and took his leave.

The next morning Arctura went to see the alteration. She opened the door of the little room: it was twice its former size, and two bureaus were standing against the wall! She peeped into the cupboard at the end of it, but saw nothing there.

That same morning she made up her mind that she would go no farther at present in regard to the chapel: it would be to break with her uncle!

In the evening, she acquainted Donal with her resolve, and he could not say she was wrong. There was no necessity for opposing her uncle--there might soon come one! He told her how he had entered the closet from behind, and of the noise he had made the night before, which had perhaps led to the opening of the place; but he did not tell her of what he had found on the bureau. The time might come when he must do so, but now he dared not render her relations with her uncle yet more uncomfortable; neither was it likely such a woman would consent to marry such a man as her cousin had shown himself; when that danger appeared, it would be time to interpose; for the mere succession to an empty title, he was not sure that he was bound to speak. The branch which could produce such scions, might well be itself a false graft on the true stem of the family!--if not, what was the family worth? He must at all events be sure it was his business before he moved in the matter!