midnight
Across the landing the great staircase , where the Reynolds hangs , which your _ cicerone _ of this twentieth century will tell you was the famous beauty of her time , and the grandmother of another famous Victorian beauty , dead not a decade since . And on this staircase Gwen , half pausing to glance at her departed prototype , started suddenly , and exclaimed : -- `` What 's that ? '' For a bell had broken the silence of the night -- a bell that had enjoyed doing so , and was slow to stop . Now a bell after midnight in a house that stands alone in a great Park , two miles from the nearest village , has to be accounted for , somehow . Not by Miss Lutwyche , who merely noted that the household would hear and answer the summons . Her young ladyship was not so indifferent to human affairs as her attendant . She said : -- `` I must know what that is .