The street was quaint and picturesque, and on some of the walls there was ancient carving; heads leered at them from over the doors and window-ledges. Then it struck twelve from somewhere in the town, and immediately all the lights went out; the street was in darkness, for, at the moment, the clouds were over the moon. “We’re in the provinces,” said Tony, laughing. “We ought to have link-boys.” Suddenly above their heads there was a light. A window was flung up and some one was standing there with a candle. It was a girl; in the candle-light she stood out brilliantly against the black background. She leaned out of the window. “Is that you, father?” she called. Then some one spoke from inside the room. There was a petulant “Oh bother! Miss Minns!” and then the window closed. Maradick had scarcely noticed the affair. He was hurrying up the hill, eager to reach the hotel. But Tony stood where he was. “By Jove!” he cried. “Did you see her eyes? Wonderful! Why, you never in all your life——!” “Candle-light is deceptive,” said Maradick. “She was wonderful! Glorious! Just for a moment like that out of the darkness! But this is indeed a city of miracles!” He looked back; the house was in absolute darkness. “She doesn’t like Miss Minns,” he added, “I expect Miss Minns is a beast; I, too, hate Miss Minns.” At last, in the dark, mysterious hall they parted. “Oh! for bed!” said Maradick. “But what a night!” cried Tony. “By heaven! what a night!” And the Admonitus Locorum smiled, very knowingly, from the head of the stairs. CHAPTER V MARADICK MAKES A PROMISE AND MEETS AN ITINERANT OPTIMIST The house was the cleverest in the world. There was nothing in Europe of its kind, and that was because its cleverness lay in the fact that you never thought it clever at all. It could, most amazingly, disappear so utterly and entirely that you never had any thoughts about it at all, and merely accepted it without discussion as a perfect background. And then, suddenly, on a morning or an evening, it would leap out at you and catch you by the throat; and the traveller wondered and was aghast at its most splendid adaptability. It was, indeed, all things to all men; but it nevertheless managed to bring out the best parts of them. All those strange people that it had seen—painters and musicians, the aristocracy and old maids, millionaires and the tumbled wastrels cast out from a thousand cities—it gathered them all, and they left it, even though they had passed but a night in its company, altered a little. And it achieved this by its adaptability. In its rooms and passages, its gardens and sudden corners, its grey lights and green lawns, there was that same secret waiting for an immediate revelation. Some thought the house a tyranny, and others called it a surprise, and a few felt that it was an impossibility, but no one disregarded it.