“Because I think he is suspicious about the lost room. He has had a wall taken down this morning. Please do not let him see you know anything about it. Davie thinks he is set on finding the lost room: 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!”