She might frighten away altogether my beautiful visitor, even whose name or origin I did not know, and I might never see her again: "You must never do that, Aunt Janet.

You and I are too good friends to have sense of distrust or annoyance come between us--which would surely happen if I had to keep thinking that you or anyone else might be watching me." RUPERT'S JOURNAL--_Continued_.
_April_ 27, 1907.
After a spell of loneliness which has seemed endless I have something to write.

When the void in my heart was becoming the receptacle for many devils of suspicion and distrust I set myself a task which might, I thought, keep my thoughts in part, at any rate, occupied--to explore minutely the neighbourhood round the Castle.

This might, I hoped, serve as an anodyne to my pain of loneliness, which grew more acute as the days, the hours, wore on, even if it should not ultimately afford me some clue to the whereabouts of the woman whom I had now grown to love so madly.
My exploration soon took a systematic form, as I intended that it should be exhaustive.

I would take every day a separate line of advance from the Castle, beginning at the south and working round by the east to the north.