The big black eyes were fixed on him, listening to every word. “Then this man--Barringcourt--leaves other than pleasant recollections with you?” “He leaves the memory of a time when life was life. That surely is bitter pleasantness enough. Perhaps that bitterness has now pervaded everything--moths and perpetual rust.” “Was he a believer in the Serpent?” Alphonso smiled almost indulgently. “He is the only unbeliever I would have spared the rack. I can almost excuse him, High Priest as I am, believing solely in himself. Yet he attended the Temple regularly, and gave large donations often privately. And he had the three sacred tails incrusted with jewels at his own expense. ’Twas marvellously beautifully done by some workers brought by him from Fairy Sky.” “And his character? Was that above reproach?” “I never enquired into it; I fear I was busy with my own affairs just then. He never confessed to nor confided much in me. I believe it was the other way about.” “And after he left--who were the next tenants?” “It remained empty three years. Then a foreign nobleman and his wife rented it. She died about nine years since, and he soon followed her. Unsatisfactory people, I believe. They worshipped some flimsy unseen fetish--nothing definite or concrete. But then Marble House is cursed, you know. It was built sacrilegiously--the strongest foundationed house in the city. No one has lived in it since.” “Has it stood empty since the foreigner’s death?” “Yes. There was some talk of pulling it down a little while since; the grounds were all overgrown, and no one could get entrance into the house. It was brought up before Parliament--to be turned into a museum; but a curt note arrived from Mr Barringcourt--I saw the handwriting, so can vouch that it was his--asking them to kindly leave his property alone till he was good enough to die. That shows he is still somewhere; though, so far as any one could make out, the note might have dropped from Heaven.” “What is the meaning of the lights to-night?” “That is one of the mysteries. In the dark hours of early morning it is often lit up thus--at least, the people say so. I have never seen it, nor have I believed the gossip till now you speak of it. All kinds of curious tales have been afloat of late. That Geoffrey Todbrook was seen looking out of an eastern window. That at midnight all the eastern windows are lit up with a weird dusky blue. That on stormy nights piercing shrieks and hollow moans are heard from the same quarter; and that one day a lad fond of adventures and climbing, scaled the high slippery garden wall, and was found lying, later on, on the pavement, in a pool of blood, his neck broken. Taken on the whole, such stories are not lively, their only redeeming feature being that they are false.” “You know them to be false?” “All except the boy. But that was a natural accident.” “I see. You attach no importance then to my seeing the lights to-night?”