“I fidgeted and worried so that night that I must have looked quite pale when my attentive hostess met me at the head of the stairs the next morning. For her hand shook quite perceptibly as she grasped mine, and her voice was pitched in no natural key as she inquired how I had slept. I replied, as truth, if not courtesy, demanded, ‘Not as well as usual,’ whereupon her eyes fell and she remarked quite hurriedly; ‘I am so sorry; you shall have another room tonight,’ adding, in what appeared to be an unconscious whisper: ‘There is no use; all feel it; even the young and the gay;’ then aloud and with irrepressible anxiety: ‘You didn’t see anything, dear?’
“‘No!’ I protested in suddenly awakened dismay; ‘only the strange eyes of that queer drawing peering at me through the curtains of my bed. Is it—is it a haunted room?’
“Her look was a shocked one, her protest quite vehement. ‘Oh, no! No one has ever witnessed anything like a ghost there, but every one finds it impossible to sleep in that bed or even in the room. I do not know why, unless it is that my father spent so many weary years of incessant wakefulness inside its walls.’
“‘And did he die in that bed?’ I asked.
“She gave a startled shiver, and drew me hurriedly downstairs. As we paused at the foot, she pressed my hand and whispered:
“‘Yes; at night; with the full of the moon upon him.’
“I answered her look with one she probably understood as little as I did hers. I had heard of this father of hers. He had been a terrible old man and had left a terrible memory behind him.
“The next day my room was changed according to her promise, but in the light of the charges I have since heard uttered against that house and the family who inhabit it, I am glad that I spent one night in what, if it was not a haunted chamber, had certainly a very thrilling effect upon its occupants.”
Second passage; the italics showing where it was most heavily marked.
“The house contained another room as interesting as the one I have already mentioned. It went by the name of the library and its walls were heavily lined with books; but the family never sat there, nor was I ever fortunate enough to see it with its doors unclosed except on the occasion of the grand reception Mistress Callista gave in my honor. I have a fancy for big rooms and more than once urged my hostess to tell me why this one stood neglected. But the lady was not communicative on this topic and it was from another member of the household I learned that its precincts had been forever clouded by the unexpected death within them of one of her father’s friends, a noted army officer.