Paliser, who had been tasting and sniffing at a glass, looked at the butler. "What is this? Take it away. It is not fit for a convict." He looked over at Cassy. "I am sorry."
"One gets so bored with good wine," said Cassy, who recently had been reading Disraeli. Yet she said it absently, the unscrambled eggs about her.
But the saying was new to Paliser, to whom few things were. He relished it accordingly and the more particularly because of its fine flavour of high-bred insolence.
From where he sat, he eyed her. Although she was eating, which is never a very engaging occupation, her face had an air that was noble and reserved. At the moment, a scruple in which there was a doubt, presented itself. In view of the coming draft act, it occurred to him that he might have gone the wrong way about it. But the scruple concerned merely the expediency of the adventure. It was not related to his conscience. He had none.
Now, though, a new decanter was before him; he tried it, drank of it, judged it decent and drank again. Being decent, it was not heady. It did not affect him. Cassy had done that. In her was a bouquet which the vineyard of youth and beauty alone produces. He had hankered for it. Now, like the decanter, it was before him. He could drink his fill. Then like the other wine, he could send it away.
XXI
The elder Paliser, seated in the hall of his town house, held a cup. In the chair, a doge had throned. On the bottom of the cup was an N topped by a crown. The cup contained hot milk.
Returning, a little before, from a drive, he had been helped up the steps, into the hall, into the chair. He had not wished to be helped farther. In the hall, the milk had been brought. As he sipped it, he looked placid, dignified, evil. He looked very much like a wicked old doge.
"When I don't move, it is remarkable how well I feel."