Clodagh looked up, colouring afresh; and the young man bowed quickly and eagerly. He belonged to a type new to her, but familiar to every social Londoner: the type of young Englishman who, gifted with unusual height and fine possibilities of muscular development, saunters through life—physically and morally—exerting his energy and his strength in one direction only—the eternal, aimless, enervating search after personal pleasure.
To be explicit, the Honourable Valentine Serracauld was suffering from that most modern of complaints—the lack of surmountable obstacles. The nephew of one of the richest peers in England, he had started life heavily handicapped. A sufficiency of money had rendered work unnecessary; good looks and a naturally ingratiating manner had precluded the need for mental equipment; while his social position had unfairly protected him from any share in the rough and tumble existence that moulds and hardens a man's character. At fifteen, he had been an average healthy public schoolboy; at five-and-twenty, he was a fashionable young aristocrat, whose only business in life was the aiding and abetting of his uncle in the absorbing pursuit of killing time.
He bowed now to Clodagh with the extreme impressiveness that men of his type bestow upon a new and promising introduction.
"Charmed to meet you, Mrs. Milbanke!" he said. "Are you a resident here—or a bird of passage like ourselves?" He indicated Barnard.
Clodagh met his intent gaze with a renewed thrill of speculative pleasure.
"My husband and I live at Florence," she explained. "We are only here on business—which sounds a desecration."
Serracauld continued to watch her.
"Not if you have any share in it," he said in a low voice.
She laughed and blushed.
"I'm afraid you speak from inexperience," she said. "To the people who know me, I am a very prosaic person."