Some impulse stronger than his will, some "spirit in his feet," tempted him forth under cover of the silence and the night to explore the dangerous region in the vague hope of finding some trace of the mysterious ghost of last night.
To have met her again he would have dared even more threatening dangers than the settling timbers and falling roof which Fred, and Clare and Elinor were unanimous in declaring menaced everyone who entered the decaying portion of the hall.
Softly shod in his velvet slippers, he opened the door and peered out into the long hall.
It was lighted by long windows at either end, through which the moonlight poured a flood of white radiance. Putting a convenient box of matches into the pocket of his dressing-gown, he sallied boldly forth.
Whether ghost or human, he longed to encounter the beautiful girl he loved again.
He entered the long corridor and walked along softly, guided by the moonlight that entered through the windows and lay in fantastic shadows upon the floor.
He found that the building was in a ruinous condition indeed. The rooms into which he looked were dismantled and bare, the papering hung in ragged, fantastic strips from the walls; huge rats scampered over the floor, frightened night-birds flapped against the windows with wild, unearthly noises. Surely, the place was well-fitted to be the abode of ghosts and shadows, it was so weird and uncanny.
But Bertram Chesleigh held on his way undauntedly. It seemed to him that he had explored every room on that upper floor, when suddenly he discovered a little passage down which he turned and found himself in front of a closed door.
The majority of the doors had stood open, swinging carelessly on their hinges.
The midnight explorer did not know why his heart beat so strangely when he stood before this closed one.