"And you, Mrs. Milbanke?" he asked in a undertone. "Are you an equally great enthusiast? Does the antique appeal very forcibly to you?"
As he put the question, he was conscious of its irony; but an irrepressible curiosity forced him to utter it. He was still labouring under an intense surprise at Milbanke's choice of a wife; and the desire to probe the nature of the relationship was strong within him.
"Are you like the man in the Eastern story?" he added. "Would you barter new lamps for old?"
Clodagh was walking in front of him as he put the question, and Milbanke was left momentarily behind. For a second she made no reply; then suddenly she turned and cast a bright glance over her shoulder.
"If you had asked me that question this morning, Mr. Barnard," she said, "I don't believe I could have answered it. But now I can. I would not part with one new, bright lamp for a hundred old ones—no matter how rare. Am I a great vandal?"
Her eyes were shining with the excitement of the moment, and her face looked beautifully and eagerly alive.
"Am I a great vandal?" she repeated softly.
There was an instant's pause; then Barnard stepped closer to her side.
"No, Mrs. Milbanke," he said. "But you are a very unmistakable child of Eve."
The dinner that night was a feast to Clodagh. She sat between Milbanke and Barnard; and though the former was silently engrossed in the thought of his coming interview; and, for the time being, the latter confined his talk to impersonal subjects, she felt as she had never felt before in the span of her twenty-two years. For the first time she was conscious of being a woman—privileged to receive the homage and the consideration of men. It was a wonderful, a thrilling discovery; all the more thrilling and all the more wonderful because shrouded as yet in a veil of mystery.