After a while I grew tired of taking an interest in nothing. I fell to wondering what Geraldine would do or say if I killed myself or was killed. She would go out for a drive very likely. Then I thought what a fool I had been to prison myself up in my bedroom and give out to the old butler that I was ill. I smoked a cigarette as I thought, and then I determined on an expedition: I would go for a prowl. At the end of the corridor on which my bedroom opened there was a door. Yesterday morning I had opened this door to see what was behind, and had seen a staircase, a spiral staircase, that had somehow an elfish look. I told you before, I think, that on my first arrival at this house everything except the dining-room seemed familiar. Well, that feeling had utterly vanished, yet _still_ everything remained familiar. I don't exactly know how to explain my meaning fully, unless I can make you understand that the ghostly part of the familiar feeling was gone. Well, the little staircase cropped up in my mind just as I finished my cigarette, and I determined on exploring it. I looked out of my room to see that no one was about, then I came along the corridor, softly. I opened the door, and there was the little spiral staircase all covered with dust. I shut the door behind me, and I can tell you it required some courage to shut that door and remain alone in the dark with that ugly little staircase. Then up the staircase I went, feeling my way by the cold little bannister rail, till suddenly my head came bump against something. I put my hand up and felt a trap door. I pushed it, and it fell back. What a strange room I entered, perfectly square, and lit by one dusty window. The walls were hung with arras, and the only piece of furniture was a large black oak chest, carved all over with foliage and figures. It stood opposite the window. Somehow this room had a strangely forlorn and melancholy appearance, it had also a vague and musty smell. The arras looked ghostly. Perhaps it was the perfect silence, but it appeared to me that here a horse and there a stag seemed ready to jump from the canvas. I sat down on the oak chest, and began to observe the tapestry more attentively. Beginning at the window, my eye ran along it. Here was a hunting scene--a meet evidently--ever so many horsemen surrounding a man on a white horse, he seemed the chief; he was dressed as a cavalier, his hair was black and flowing. Beyond, in the distance, lay a castle, a castle on a green hill, with a white pathway running down it. I knew that castle was meant to represent Castle Sinclair. A little further on another scene. The same cavalier, riding, and by his side a lady on a brown horse; how proudly the horses stepped. A little further on another scene, love this time, and the same man and the same woman; they were kissing.