He spoke affably, casually, in all innocence; but scarcely had the words left his lips than he precipitately wished them back. With a loud laugh, Asshlin struck the table with his hand.
"Ah, good!" he exclaimed. "Good! Now, Clo, what have you got to say?"
But with a gesture quite as vehement as his own, the girl raised her head.
"I say that it's not true," she said. "It isn't true. I'm not like him."
She glanced from her father to Milbanke with suddenly kindling eyes.
"I'm not like him!" she repeated. "I won't be like him!"
Asshlin leant back quickly in his chair. He was still laughing, but a shade of temper was audible in the laugh.
"Do you hear that, James?" he said. "We of the present generation are altogether too good for the past. A slip of a girl nowadays thinks herself vastly superior to a great-great-grandfather who was the finest horseman and the most open-handed man in Munster. That's the attitude of to-day."
He moved aside, as Burke re-entered the room and laid a decanter of port and two glasses on the shining mahogany table.
"My great-grandfather, Anthony Asshlin," he went on deliberately, "was as fine a specimen of the Irish gentleman as ever lived—I don't care who denies it. Have a glass of port, James? An appreciation of good wine was the one thing he left his descendants."