“No ghosts?” laughed Mr. Cornell, too happy in the return of his hopes to be fully sensible of the feelings of those about him.  “No whispers from impalpable lips or touches from spectre hands?  Nothing to explain the mystery of that room long shut up that even Mr. Van Broecklyn declares himself ignorant of its secret?”

“Nothing,” returned Violet, showing her dimples in full force now.

“If Miss Strange had any such experiences—­if she has anything to tell worthy of so marked a curiosity, she will tell it now,” came from the gentleman just alluded to, in tones so stern and strange that all show of frivolity ceased on the instant.  “Have you anything to tell, Miss Strange?”

Greatly startled, she regarded him with widening eyes for a moment, then with a move towards the door, remarked, with a general look about her: 

“Mr. Van Broecklyn knows his own house, and doubtless can relate its histories if he will.  I am a busy little body who having finished my work am now ready to return home, there to wait for the next problem which an indulgent fate may offer me.”

She was near the threshold—­she was about to take her leave, when suddenly she felt two hands fall on her shoulder, and turning, met the eyes of Mr. Van Broecklyn burning into her own.

“You saw!” dropped in an almost inaudible whisper from his lips.

The shiver which shook her answered him better than any word.

With an exclamation of despair, he withdrew his hands, and facing the others now standing together in a startled group, he said, as soon as he could recover some of his self-possession: 

“I must ask for another hour of your company.  I can no longer keep my sorrow to myself.  A dividing line has just been drawn across my life, and I must have the sympathy of someone who knows my past, or I shall go mad in my self-imposed solitude.  Come back, Miss Strange.  You of all others have the prior right to hear.”

VII

“I shall have to begin,” said he, when they were all seated and ready to listen, “by giving you some idea, not so much of the family tradition, as of the effect of this tradition upon all who bore the name of Van Broecklyn.  This is not the only house, even in America, which contains a room shut away from intrusion.  In England there are many.  But there is this difference between most of them and ours.  No bars or locks forcibly held shut the door we were forbidden to open.  The command was enough; that and the superstitious fear which such a command, attended by a long and unquestioning obedience, was likely to engender.