Her eyes, this time, hoisted the distress signal so perceptibly that Caine, skilled to read the signs, broke off in the midst of a sentence to his right-hand neighbor and engaged Caleb in momentary conversation. Letty, in the interval, stared appealingly about the board. But, thanks to her own success in drawing Conover into tête-à-tête, the others were not, at the instant, noticing either of them. Thrown upon herself for comfort, she decided the rough guest had intended his asinine remark as a compliment. The thought did much to console her. She glanced, sideways, at him, with a new interest; and, Caine, relieved, saw the ‘Fair Weather’ standard flying once more.
But Conover, subtly aware of her emotion, knew he had somehow blundered. He saw how far he had deflected from his original plan of stony self-control. He knew it was the few glasses of wine he had drunk which, while in no way befuddling his brain, had given his tongue an undue looseness. A wave of self-contempt passed over him; sharp, unaccustomed. A manservant bent to fill one of his glasses. Caleb, recalling the etiquette-book maxim, clapped his hand hastily over the top of the goblet. The gesture was sudden and carried with it an unintended force. The wrought stem of the thin Venetian glass snapped.
Conover, purple with angry mortification, surveyed the wreck he had wrought. Then, pulling himself together, he looked about the board, the glare behind his forced grin challenging any and every eye that might dare to show derision.
“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Standish!” he called down the table to his host. “I’ll save the pieces and send you a whole set like it to-morrow. Where’d’you buy it?”
“It is of no consequence at all,” returned Standish, the consumption spots on his cheek bones burning a little darker red than usual. He turned to the neighbor with whom he had been talking, and with his usual dry cough took up the shattered thread of conversation. But Caleb was resolved not to permit his overtures at restitution to be slighted.
“Where’d you buy it?” he repeated, raising his voice a little, “I want to know so I—”
“It is of no importance at all,” protested Standish, guiltily avoiding his sister-in-law’s saintly gaze. “I—”
“But I want to know,” persisted Caleb. “Where’d the glasses come from?”
“Why,” smiled Standish with a painful effort at careless good-nature, “I believe they’re some we picked up in Venice once. But they—”
“Well, I’ll send there for ’em, then,” promised Caleb, his defiant glance once more sweeping the oval of faces.