He still ate his food condescendingly—with one hand. But he drank with great good-will.
He called to the butler, who had been going round with a gold-necked bottle in a napkin. He was to come back, The Tartar said, and fill the ladies' glasses.
I said no. Bettina said she, too, drank water.
The Tartar said "Nonsense!"—quite as though the matter were for him to decide. The servant filled Bettina's tall, vaselike glass. Bettina looked alarmed. Already she had displeased this dreadful Tartar once.
"Ought I?" she telegraphed across to me. I shook my head.
"There is one woman in London"—The Tartar made a motion towards the head of the table—"one woman who's got a decent cellar." The Tartar was almost genial. He raised his glass to my aunt. "I approve of the new coiffure, too. Rippin'!"
The Colonel was not to be diverted from the subject of the wine. "Take an old man's advice," he said to me. "It's a chancy sort of world. Make sure of a little certain bliss." He lifted his own glass and drained it.
The Tartar said something to Bettina which I could not hear. She looked up at him with a kind of wonder in her eyes, and with that "fiery rose" quite suddenly overspreading her face again. She put out her hand to the tall glass, hesitated, and then looked at the head of the table. Perhaps Bettina saw what all of a sudden was clear to me. Aunt Josephine was like a huge grey hawk. The head craning out; the narrow forehead, all grey crest; the face falling away from the beak. How she had changed from the days when she had a double chin! The tilt of the outstretched head was exactly like a bird's. Watching sideways—watching ... for what?
The eye made me shrink. It made Bettina set her lips, obedient, to the glass. She looked apologetic over the rim at me.
Mine stood untouched.