“You don’t say so!” said Mr. Searle with a large vague gasp. “Well--well--well!” he added in a voice which might have meant everything or nothing; and then, in his whimsical way, went on to finish a glass of wine. His searching eye, as he drank, met mine, and for a moment we each rather deeply sounded the other, to the effect no doubt of a slight embarrassment. “And you,” he said by way of carrying this off--“how about _your_ wardrobe?” “Oh his!” cried my friend; “his wardrobe’s immense. He could dress up a regiment!” He had drunk more champagne--I admit that the champagne was good--than was from any point of view to have been desired. He was rapidly drifting beyond any tacit dissuasion of mine. He was feverish and rash, and all attempt to direct would now simply irritate him. As we rose from the table he caught my troubled look. Passing his arm for a moment into mine, “This is the great night!” he strangely and softly said; “the night and the crisis that will settle me.” Mr. Searle had caused the whole lower portion of the house to be thrown open and a multitude of lights to be placed in convenient and effective positions. Such a marshalled wealth of ancient candlesticks and flambeaux I had never beheld. Niched against the dusky wainscots, casting great luminous circles upon the pendent stiffness of sombre tapestries, enhancing and completing with admirable effect the variety and mystery of the great ancient house, they seemed to people the wide rooms, as our little group passed slowly from one to another, with a dim expectant presence. We had thus, in spite of everything, a wonderful hour of it. Mr. Searle at once assumed the part of cicerone, and--I had not hitherto done him justice--Mr. Searle became almost agreeable. While I lingered behind with his sister he walked in advance with his kinsman. It was as if he had said: “Well, if you want the old place you shall have it--so far as the impression goes!” He spared us no thrill--I had almost said no pang--of that experience. Carrying a tall silver candlestick in his left hand, he raised it and lowered it and cast the light hither and thither, upon pictures and hangings and carvings and cornices. He knew his house to perfection. He touched upon a hundred traditions and memories, he threw off a cloud of rich reference to its earlier occupants. He threw off again, in his easy elegant way, a dozen--happily lighter--anecdotes. His relative attended with a brooding deference. Miss Searle and I meanwhile were not wholly silent. “I suppose that by this time you and your cousin are almost old friends,” I remarked. She trifled a moment with her fan and then raised her kind small eyes. “Old friends--yet at the same time strangely new! My cousin, my cousin”--and her voice lingered on the word--“it seems so strange to call him my cousin after thinking these many years that I’ve no one in the world but my brother. But he’s really so very odd!”