“And with the power to enter at will into the haunted chamber, had you not the curiosity to tread the forbidden ground?” cried Vibert.
“When I first found that the key fitted the key-hole in the wall, I turned it, and pushed open the small panel-door,” replied Bruce; “but I did not pass into the bricked-up room.”
“You looked in?”
“But saw nothing, for the place was pitch-dark,” answered Bruce. “I only observed that the air was close, as might be expected when coming from a chamber from which light and air had been carefully excluded for the last fifty years.”
“And so you have been a whole month with only a door between you and the mysterious apartment to which such strange and thrilling stories belong!” cried Vibert. “I suppose that you intend thoroughly to explore its inmost recess.”
“I see no use in so doing,” was Bruce’s reply. “As the relation to whose bequest my father owes the possession of the house so anxiously tried to ensure that no one should enter that room, it seems scarcely honourable to take advantage of her ignorance of the existence of that small door in the panel.”
“Pshaw! that is a mere romantic scruple,” said Vibert. “I could not withstand the temptation to explore the haunted chamber.”
“I have a lack of curiosity,” observed Bruce Trevor.
“Or a lack of something else,” cried his thoughtless young brother, in a provokingly satirical tone.
Bruce was in an irritable mood on that evening, and at no time would have patiently borne what sounded like an imputation on his personal courage. Who should dare to taunt him with lack of daring, or the slightest taint of that superstitious fear which he scorned even in Emmie?