"No; nor do I care that the servants should know it, nor Emmie, who is sufficiently nervous already as to what regards the so-called haunted chamber. I have hung a large map over that part of the panel in which is the key-hole; and as the housemaid never ventures to move what I place on the walls, the fact of there being a door of communication between the two rooms is not likely to be discovered even by her." "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? "If you cannot speak common sense, you idiot," Bruce fiercely exclaimed, "keep your idle twaddle for those who may mistake it for wit!" "How now, boys? what's all this?" cried the loud, angry voice of Mr. Trevor, who, re-entering the room at that moment, had heard Bruce's passionate words, and seen his fiery glance at his brother. "Bruce, you forget yourself strangely." Bruce bit his nether lip hard. He would not bandy words with his father, but still less would his proud spirit brook such sharp reproof even from a parent. The young man rose, quitted the study, and with a swelling heart went to his own apartment. Bruce bitterly, though silently, accused his father of partiality and injustice; the young man was blinded by pride to the fact that Mr. Trevor had had good and sufficient reason for finding fault with his son's intemperate language.