"I—I never drink champagne," she said a little diffidently.
"Oh, Mrs. Milbanke! And my poor uncle has been sacking the Abbati cellars for this particular vintage!" Serracauld glanced up quickly and almost reproachfully.
Barnard laughed, as he blissfully drained his own glass.
"You are really very unkind, Mrs. Milbanke," he murmured. "You make one feel such a deplorable worldling."
But Deerehurst looked round towards a waiter who was re-entering the room.
"Bring this lady another glass and some more champagne!" he said.
Clodagh turned to him sharply and apprehensively. But he touched her wrist with his finger-tips.
"Please!" he said in his thin, high-bred voice—"please! I want you to taste this wine. I generally have some difficulty in getting it outside my own house."
His pale, far-seeing eyes rested on her face; and it seemed to her excited fancy that their glance supplemented his words. That, as plainly as eyes could speak, they added the suggestion that some day she might honour that house with her presence. The idea confused her. She turned away from him in slight uneasiness; and at the same moment one of the waiters filled her long Venetian glass with the light golden wine.
"To please me!" Deerehurst murmured again—"to please me!"