“Savage, you are, as usual, blunt, not to say rude. Let us have another bottle of Cliquot.”
Jack shook his head, but another bottle came up, and he sat and took his share in silence, and, indeed, almost unconsciously. For all the attention he paid to the chatter of his two friends they might not have been present.
His thoughts flew backward to the shady grove of Warden Forest, to the girl who, like a vision of purity and innocence and loveliness, had floated like a dream across his life.
He gave one passing thought to Len, too, and his story.
It was a strange coincidence that they should both have met their fates at one and the same time, or nearly so.
He would have thought it stranger still if he could have lifted the veil of the future and seen how closely the web of his life was woven with the woof, not only of Una’s, but of Laura Treherne, and also of Lady Bell Earlsley.
All unconscious he had turned a leaf of his life’s book, and had begun a new chapter in which these three women were to take a part.
But he sat and drank the champagne, knowing nothing of this, and—I am sorry to have to say it—he was rapidly arriving at that condition in which it is dangerous to be within a mile of that fascinating fluid. When a man passes from a state of half-feverish restlessness and dissatisfaction to one of comparative comfort, and that by the aid of the cheering glass, it is time to put the cheering glass aside and go home.
Jack did not go home; on the contrary, he went into the billiard-room, and Cliquot followed, as a matter of course.
For a time Jack had managed to forget everything excepting his promise to Len; he would not enter the card-room, but he stuck to pool and champagne.