“Only,” Miss Sibson answered with composure, “what I ought to have said long ago—that nothing can be worse for her ladyship than the cold air that comes in at the cracks of this window!” “It’s not that,” Lady Sybil replied, smiling. “They have set fire to the Mansion House, Mary. You can see the flames in the room on the farther side of the door.” Mary uttered an exclamation of horror, and they all looked out. The Mansion House was the most distant house on the north, or left-hand, side of the Square, viewed from the window at which they stood; the house next Miss Sibson’s being about the middle of the west side. Nearer them, on the same side as the Mansion House, stood another public building—the Custom House. And nearer again, being the most northerly house on their own side of the Square, stood a third—the Excise Office. They had thus a fair, though a side view, of the front of the Mansion House, and were able to watch, with what calmness they might, the flames shoot from one window after another; until, presently, meeting in a waving veil of fire, they hid—save when the wind blew them aside—all the upper part of the house from their eyes. A great fire in the night, the savage, uncontrollable revolt of man’s tamed servant—is at all times a terrible sight. Nor on this occasion was it only the horror of the flames, roaring and crackling and pouring forth a million of sparks, which chained their eyes. For as these rose, they shed an intense light, not only on the heights of Redcliffe, visible above the east side of the Square, and on the stately tower which rose from them, but on the multitude below; on the hurrying forms that, monkey-like, played before the flames and seemed to feed them, and on a still stranger sight, the expanse of up-turned faces that, in the rear of the active rioters, extended to the farthest limit of the Square. For it was the quiescence, it was the inertness of the gazing crowd which most appalled the spectators at the window. To see that great house burn and to see no man stretch forth a hand to quench it, this terrified. “Oh, but it is frightful! It is horrible!” Mary exclaimed. “I should like to knock their heads together!” Miss Sibson cried sternly. “What are the soldiers doing? What is anyone doing?” “They have hounded on the dogs,” Lady Sybil said slowly—she alone seemed to view the sight with a dispassionate eye, “and they are biting instead of barking! That is all.” “Dogs?” Miss Sibson echoed. “Ay, the dogs of Reform!” Lady Sybil replied cynically. “Brougham’s dogs! Grey’s dogs! Russell’s dogs! I could wish Sir Robert were here, it would so please him to see his words fulfilled!” And then, as in surprise at the thing she had uttered, “I wonder when I wished to please him before?” she muttered. “Oh, but it is frightful!” Mary repeated, unable to remove her eyes from the flames.