She was told that they were still all together in the library; the ladies had been sent home.

“Then let us go to them,” said Violet, hiding under a smile her great fear that here was an affair which might very easily spell for her that dismal word, failure.

So great was that fear that under all ordinary circumstances she would have had no thought for anything else in the short interim between this stating of the problem and her speedy entrance among the persons involved.  But the circumstances of this case were so far from ordinary, or rather let me put it in this way, the setting of the case was so very extraordinary, that she scarcely thought of the problem before her, in her great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was being so carefully guided.  So much that was tragic and heartrending had occurred here.  The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the country’s annals (of which more hereafter), all made an appeal to her imagination, and centred her thoughts on what she saw about her.  There was door which no man ever opened—­had never opened since Revolutionary times—­should she see it?  Should she know it if she did see it?  Then Mr. Van Broecklyn himself! just to meet him, under any conditions and in any place, was an event.  But to meet him here, under the pall of his own mystery!  No wonder she had no words for her companions, or that her thoughts clung to this anticipation in wonder and almost fearsome delight.

His story was a well-known one.  A bachelor and a misanthrope, he lived absolutely alone save for a large entourage of servants, all men and elderly ones at that.  He never visited.  Though he now and then, as on this occasion, entertained certain persons under his roof, he declined every invitation for himself, avoiding even, with equal strictness, all evening amusements of whatever kind, which would detain him in the city after ten at night.  Perhaps this was to ensure no break in his rule of life never to sleep out of his own bed.  Though he was a man well over fifty he had not spent, according to his own statement, but two nights out of his own bed since his return from Europe in early boyhood, and those were in obedience to a judicial summons which took him to Boston.

This was his main eccentricity, but he had another which is apparent enough from what has already been said.  He avoided women.  If thrown in with them during his short visits into town, he was invariably polite and at times companionable, but he never sought them out, nor had gossip, contrary to its usual habit, ever linked his name with one of the sex.

Yet he was a man of more than ordinary attraction.  His features were fine and his figure impressive.  He might have been the cynosure of all eyes had he chosen to enter crowded drawing-rooms, or even to frequent public assemblages, but having turned his back upon everything of the kind in his youth, he had found it impossible to alter his habits with advancing years; nor was he now expected to.  The position he had taken was respected.  Leonard Van Broecklyn was no longer criticized.