"Who was that?" Clodagh asked involuntarily, as the stranger's boat glided out of sight. Then she blushed suddenly. "Why are you laughing?" she demanded.
Barnard smiled.
"I am not laughing, Mrs. Milbanke," he murmured. "I assure you I am not laughing. It is the merest smile at nature's little bit of stage management. That interestingly bronzed young Englishman is Sir Walter Gore!"
CHAPTER VIII
This little incident—this small and yet significant interlude—in Clodagh's day of new-born freedom, possessed a weight and an importance all its own. It is quite possible that, taken as a mere note in the tuneful, inconsequent symphony of her social life in Venice, Barnard's expression of his sentiments might have glanced across her mind, leaving no definite impression. But the web of fate is wonderfully woven. Barnard had propounded those sentiments through the medium of a name—a name which was to be indelibly printed upon Clodagh's memory by the strangely opportune appearance of its owner.
At the moment when the gondolas passed, at the moment when Barnard laughingly explained the stranger's identity, the name of Walter Gore took on a new significance, became a personal element in touch with her own existence.
In studying the effect of this incident upon her actions, it must be borne in mind that Clodagh's moral position was strangely incongruous—a position to which not one amongst her new acquaintances possessed a key. She was a married woman with the vitality, the curiosity, the sense of adventure of a girl in her first season. She was like a plant that, having been shut for long in dark places, is suddenly exposed to the influences of warmth and light. She glowed, she blossomed, she expanded under every passing touch.
As she leant back against the cushions of the gondola and met the amused and quizzical glance that accompanied Barnard's explanation, her thoughts sprang forward under a certain stimulus of excitement; her blood—the blood of a reckless, adventurous race—leaped suddenly in response to a new idea. She looked up at her companion, her face glowing, her hands clasped lightly in her lap.
"Mr. Barnard," she said, "will Sir Walter Gore be at the Palazzo Ugochini to-night?"
Barnard met her glance. For a moment he studied her whimsically, then he responded by putting a question of his own.