Читать книгу The Gambler - Katherine Cecil Thurston - Страница 9

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PART I

CHAPTER I

An eight-mile drive over rain-washed Irish roads in the quick-falling dusk of autumn is an experience trying to the patience, even to the temper, of the average Saxon. Yet James Milbanke made neither comment nor objection as mile after mile of roadway spun away like a ribbon behind him, as the mud rose in showers from the wheels of the old-fashioned trap in which he sat, and the half-trained mare between the shafts swerved now to the right, now to the left—her nervous glance caught by the spectral shapes of the blackthorn hedges or the motionless forms of the wayside donkeys, lying asleep in the ditches. Perhaps this stoicism was the outcome of an innate power to endure; perhaps it was a merely negative quality, illustrating the lack of that doubtful blessing, imagination. But whatever its origin, it stood him in good stead as he covered the long stretch of flat country that links the south-eastern seaport of Muskeere with the remote fishing village of Carrigmore and its outlying district of Orristown.

His outlook upon Ireland, like his outlook upon life, was untinged by humour. He had seen no ground for amusement in the fact that he had been the only passenger to alight from the train at the Muskeere terminus, and consequently no ground for loneliness in the sight of the solitary vehicle, dimly silhouetted against the murky sky, that had awaited his coming. The ludicrous points of the scene: the primitive railway station with its insufficient flickering lights, its little knot of inquisitive idlers, its one porter—slovenly, amiable, incorrigibly lazy—all contributing the unconscious background to his own neat, conventional, totally alien personality, had left him untouched.

The only individual to whom the picture had made its appeal had been the solitary porter. As he relieved Milbanke of his valise and rug on the step of the first-class carriage, an undeniable twinkle had gleamed in his eyes.

"Fine, soft night, sir," he had volunteered. "Tim Burke is outside for you."

For a second Milbanke had stared at him in a mixture of doubt and displeasure. A month's pilgrimage to the ancient Celtic landmarks had left him, as it has left many a Saxon before him, unlearned in that most interesting and most inscrutable of all survivals—the Celt himself. He had surveyed the face of the porter cautiously and half distrustfully; then he had made a guarded reply.

"I am certainly expecting a—a conveyance," he had admitted. "But I have never heard of Tim Burke."

"Why, thin Tim has heard of you!" the other had replied with unruffled suavity. "Isn't it the English gintlemen that's goin' to stop wid Mr. Asshlin over at Orristown that you are? Sure, Tim told me all about you; an' I knew you the minute I sat eyes on you—let alone there was no wan else in the train."

Without more ado he had hoisted Milbanke's belongings to his shoulder, and lounged out of the station.

"Here you are, Tim, man!" he had exclaimed as he deposited the articles one after another under the seat of the trap with a lofty disregard of their owner. "'Tis a soft night an' a long road you have before you! Is it cold the mare is?" He had paused to eye the impatient young animal before him, with the Irishman's unfailing appreciation of horse-flesh.

Here Milbanke, feeling that some veiled reproof had been suggested, had broken in upon the monologue.

"I hope I haven't injured the horse by the delay," he had said hastily. "The train was exactly twenty-two minutes behind its time."

Then for the first time the old coachman had bent down from his lofty position.

"An', sure, what harm if it was, sir?" he had exclaimed, voicing the hospitality due to his master's guest. "What hurry is there at all—so long as it brought you safe?"

"True for you, Tim!" the porter had interjected softly; and seizing Milbanke's arm, he had swung him into the trap, precisely as he had swung the luggage a few seconds previously.

"Thank you, sir!" he had murmured a moment later. "Good-night to you! Good-night, Tim! Safe road!" And, drawing back, he had looked on with admiration while Burke had gathered up the reins and the mare had plunged forward into the misty, sea-scented night.

That had been Milbanke's first introduction into the district where he proposed to spend a week with a man he had not seen for nearly thirty years.

As the trap moved forward, leaving the straggling town with its scattered lights far behind, his thoughts—temporarily distracted by the incidents of his arrival—reverted to the channel in which they had run during the greater part of the day. Again his mind returned to the period of his college career when, as a quiet student, he had been drawn by the subtle attraction of contrast into a friendship with Denis Asshlin—the young Irishman whose spirit, whose enthusiasms, whose exuberant joy in life had shone in such vivid colours beside his own neutral-tinted personality. His thoughts passed methodically from those eager, early days to the more sober ones that had followed Asshlin's recall to Ireland, and thence onward over the succeeding tale of years. He reviewed his own calm, if somewhat lonely, manhood; his aimless delving first into one branch of learning, then into another; his gradually dawning interest in the study of archaeology—an interest that, fostered by ample leisure and ample means, had become the temperate and well-ordered passion of his life. The retrospect was pleasant. There is always an agreeable sensation to a man of Milbanke's temperament in looking back upon unruffled times. He became oblivious of the ruts in the road and of the mare's erratic movements as he traced the course of events to the point where, two months before, the discovery of a dozen gold platters and as many drinking vessels, embedded in a bog in the County Tyrone, had turned the eyes of the archæological world upon Ireland; and he, with other students of antiquity, had been bitten with the desire to see the unique and priceless objects for himself.

The journey to Tyrone had been a pleasant experience; and it was there, under the mild exaltation of the genuine find, that it had suddenly been suggested to his mind that certain ancient ruins, including a remarkable specimen of the Irish round tower, were to be found on the south-east coast not three miles from the property of his old college friend.

Whether it was the archaeological instinct to resurrect the past, or the merely human wish to re-live his own small portion of it, that had prompted him to write to Asshlin must remain an open question. It is sufficient that the letter was written and dispatched and that the answer came in hot haste.

It had reached him in the form of a telegram running as follows: "Come at once, and stay for a year. Stagnating to death in this isolation. Asshlin." An hour later another, and a more voluminous message, had followed, in which—as if by an after-thought—he had been given the necessary directions as to the means of reaching Orristown.

It was at the point where his musings reached Asshlin's telegrams that he awakened from his reverie and looked about him. For the first time a personal interest in the country through which he was passing stirred him. He realised that the salt sting of the sea had again begun to mingle with the night mist, and judged thereby that the road had again emerged upon the coast. He noticed that the hedges had become sparser; that wherever a tree loomed out of the dusk it bore the mark of the sea gales in a certain grotesqueness of shape.

This was the isolation of which Asshlin had spoken!

With an impulse extremely uncommon to him, he turned in his seat and addressed the silent old coachman beside him.

"Has your master altered much in thirty years?" he asked.

There was silence for a while. Old Burke, with the deliberation of his class, liked to weigh his words before giving them utterance.

"Is it Mister Dinis changed?" he repeated at last. Then almost immediately he corrected himself. "Sure, 'tis Mister Asshlin I ought to be sayin', sir. But the ould name slips out. Though the poor master is gone these twenty-nine year—the Lord have mercy on him!—I can niver git it into me head that 'tis to Mister Dinis we ought to be lookin'."

More than once during his brief stay in Ireland, Milbanke had been confronted with this annihilation of time in the Irish mind, and Burke's statement aroused no surprise.

"Has he changed?" he asked again in his dry, precise voice.

Burke was silent while the mare pulled hard on the reins. And having regained his mastery over her, he looked down on his companion.

"Is it changed?" he said. "Sure, why wouldn't he be changed? With the father gone—an' the wife gone—an' the children growin' up. Sure 'tis changed we all are, an' goin' down the hill fast—God help us!"

Milbanke glanced up sharply.

"Children?" he said. "Children?"

Burke turned in his seat.

"Sure 'tisn't to have the ould stock die out you'd be wantin'?" he said. "You'd travel the round of the county before you'd see the like of Mister Dinis's children—though 'tis girls they are."

"Girls?" Milbanke's mind was disturbed by the thought of children. Denis Asshlin with children! The idea was incongruous.

"Two of 'em!" said Burke laconically.

"Dear me!—dear me! And yet I suppose it's only natural. How old are they?"

Burke flicked the mare lightly, and the trap lurched forward.

"Miss Clodagh is turned fifteen," he said, "and the youngster is goin' on ten. 'Twas ten year back, come next December, that she was born. Sure I remimber it well. An' six weeks after, Mister Dinis was followin' her poor mother to the churchyard beyant in Carrigmore. The Lord keep us all! 'Twas she was the nice, quiet creature, and Miss Nance is the livin' stamp of her. But God bless us, 'tis Miss Clodagh that's her father's child." He added this last remark with a force that at the time conveyed nothing, though it was destined to recur later to Milbanke's mind.

"But your master?" the stranger repeated. The momentary diversion of the children had ceased to hold him. Again the vision of Asshlin—Asshlin the impetuous hero of past days—had risen intangible, mirage-like and yet compelling from his native stretch of rugged country.

But Burke made no reply. All his energies were directed to the guiding of the mare down a steep incline. For a space Milbanke was conscious of a dangerously accelerated pace; then the white piers of a large gate sped past them, and he was aware of the black shadow of overhanging trees.

Something unusual, something faintly prophetic and only vaguely comprehended, touched his prosaic nature at that moment. He was entering on a new phase of life. Without conscious preparation he was to see the world from a new point of view. With a fresh spur of anxious curiosity, he turned again to Burke.

"But your master?" he asked. "Has he changed much? Will I see a great alteration?"

For an added space the old man remained mute, while he piloted the trap up the sweep of avenue, with that irresistible desire for a fine finish that animates every Irish driver. Then, as they spun round the final curve, as the great square house loomed out of the mist, he replied without slackening his vigilance.

"Is it changed?" he repeated half to himself. "Sure, if the Almighty doesn't change a man in thirty year, it stands to rason that the divil must."

CHAPTER II

To English ears the reply was curious. Yet with all its vagueness, all its racial inclination towards high colour, it held the germ of truth that frequently lies in such utterances. With native acuteness it threw out a suggestion, without betraying a confidence.

An instant after it was spoken, there was a final flourish of the whip, a scrape of wheels on the wet gravel, a straining and creaking of damp leather, and the trap drew up before the big white house. Milbanke caught a fleeting suggestion of a shabby door with pillars on which rested a square balcony of rusty iron, a number of unlighted windows, a general air of grandeur and decay curiously blended. Then the hall door opened, and a voice, whose first note roused a hundred memories, rolled out across the darkness.

"Is that you, James? Come in!—come in! Keep the mare in hand, Burke. Steady, now, James! Let me hold the rug and give you a hand down. She's a little rogue, and might be making a bolt for her stable. Well, you're as welcome as the flowers in May! Come in!—come in!"

It was over in a flash—the arrival, the tempestuous greeting, the hard grip of Asshlin's hand; and the two men were facing each other in the candle-lit hall.

"Well, you're welcome, James!" Asshlin repeated. "You're welcome! Let me have a look at you. I declare it's younger you are!"

He laid his hand heavily on the other's shoulder, and uttered this obvious untruth with all the warmth and conviction that Irish imagination and Irish hospitality could suggest.

"But you're perished after the long drive! Burke!" he called through the open door. "Burke, when you're done with the mare come round and carry up Mr. Milbanke's baggage. Now, James!" He wheeled round again, catching up a silver candlestick from the hall table. "Now, if you come upstairs, I'll show you where we're going to billet you."

With long, hasty steps he crossed the hall, his tall figure casting gaunt shadows on the bare and lofty wall.

"We're a trifle unsophisticated here," he went on with a loud, hard laugh. "But at least we'll give you enough to eat and a bed to lie on. After all, a decent dinner and a warm welcome are the bone and sinew of hospitality the world over. Unless they include a drop of something to put life into a man——"

He paused, turning round upon his guest.

"By Jupiter, that reminds me! Have a small drink before we go another step, just to take the cold out of you?"

Milbanke, who was close behind him, glanced up. He saw his host's face more clearly than he had seen it in the hall. His answer when it came was hurried and a little confused.

"No, Denis. No," he said. "Nothing; nothing, I assure you."

Asshlin laughed again.

"Still the same stickler?" he said. "How virtues cling to a man!"

He turned and began to mount the stairs. Then, reaching the first door on the wide corridor, he paused.

"Here's your habitation," he said. "Burke will bring up your belongings and get you whatever you want. We dine in a quarter of an hour."

He nodded; and was turning away, when a fresh thought struck him.

"You may as well take this candle," he said; "we haven't arrived at the civilisation of gas. You might stumble over something, looking for the matches. This is practically a bachelor establishment, you know—without any bachelor comforts."

Once more he laughed; and, thrusting the candle into his guest's hand, hurried away across the landing.

In silence Milbanke took the candle and, holding it uncertainly, waited until his host had disappeared. Then slowly he turned and entered the large, bare bedroom. For a moment he hesitated, his eyes wandering from the faded window-hangings to the stiff, old-fashioned furniture. Finally, laying aside the candlestick, he sat down upon the side of the forbidding-looking four-post bedstead.

What motive prompted him to the action he could scarcely have defined. He was strangely moved by the scene just gone through—stirred in a manner he could never have anticipated. For the moment the precise, matter-of-fact archaeologist was submerged; and the man—dry, narrow, pedantic perhaps, but nevertheless capable of human sentiments—was uppermost. The sight of Asshlin, the sound of his voice, and the touch of his hand had possessed an alchemy all their own. The past, that years of separation had dimmed and tarnished, had gleamed out from the shadows and taken shape before his eyes. The influence, the fascination that Asshlin had once exercised, had touched him again at the first contact of personalities. But it was an altered fascination. The alloy of doubt and apprehension had tainted the old feeling. The question he had been prompted to ask Burke had answered itself at the first glimpse of his host's face. Indisputably, unmistakably, Asshlin had changed.

And in what lay that change? That was the question he put to himself as he sat on the bed, unconsciously noting the long, wavering flicker of the candle-flame against the faded wall-paper. He had aged; but the change did not lie with age alone. Something more relentless and more corroding than time had drawn the worn, discontented lines about the mouth, kindled the unnatural, restless glitter in the eyes, and changed the note of the voice from spontaneous vitality to recklessness. The change lay deeper; it lay in the heart and the soul of the man himself.

With a sensation of doubt—of puzzled doubt and inexplicable disappointment—he rose, crossed the room, and, drawing the curtains over the windows, shut out the dark, damp night.

CHAPTER III

It was nearly three-quarters of an hour later that a tremendous bell, clanging through the house, announced that dinner had been served.

A wash, a change of clothes, and a half-hour of solitude had done much for Milbanke. He felt more normal, less alienated by unfamiliar surroundings than he had done in the first confused moments that had followed his arrival. The vague sense of disappointment and apprehension, the vague suspicion that Asshlin had undergone an immense alteration still tormented him—as half-apprehended evils ever torment the minds of those who see and study life as a thing apart from human nature; but the immediate effect of the feeling was less poignant. He unconsciously found himself anticipating the next glimpse of his old friend with a touch of curiosity; and when the announcement of dinner broke in upon his meditations, he was surprised at the readiness with which he obeyed the summons.

His first sight of the dining-room came pleasantly to his senses, numbed by the long drive and the bare coldness of his bedroom. It was large and lofty: three long curtained windows occupied one of its walls, while from the others numerous pictures of the dead-and-gone Asshlins looked out of their canvases from tarnished gold frames; the mahogany furniture, though of an ugly and ungainly type, was massive; and over the whole room, softening its severity and hiding the ravages of time, lay the warm red glow of a huge peat fire and the radiance of a dozen candles set in heavy silver sconces.

He stood for a moment in the doorway, agreeably conscious of the mingled shadow and light; then his attention was attracted to two figures already occupying the room.

Asshlin himself was standing by the hearth, his back to the fire, his feet apart, while by his side, in evident nervous embarrassment; stood a little girl of nine or ten. Instantly he saw his guest, Asshlin put his hand on the child's shoulder and pushed her forward.

"Here's the youngest shoot on the old tree, James!" he cried with a laugh. "Shake hands with him, Nance!"

Somewhat uncertainly and very shyly the child looked up and smiled. She was extremely pretty, with a gipsy-like prettiness new to Milbanke. The only attribute she had inherited from her father's family was the clear olive skin—that distinguished all the Asshlins. Her dark brown hair, her deep blue eyes, her peculiarly winning smile, had all come to her from her dead mother.

With an embarrassment almost equal to her own, Milbanke extended his hand. The average modern child he ignored with comfortable superiority, but this small girl, with her warm smile and her overwhelming shyness, was something infinitely more different to deal with. He shifted his position uneasily.

"How d'you do?" he hazarded. "How d'you do—Nance?"

The little brown fingers stirred nervously in his clasp, and the child, still smiling, made some totally unintelligible reply.

With a boisterous laugh, Asshlin ended the situation.

"Easily known you're not a father, James!" he cried. "Why, you'd have given her a kiss and clinched the business fifty seconds ago. But you're starving. Where's that scamp Clo?"

He turned again to the little girl who had drawn nearer to him for protection.

She replied, but in so low a tone that Milbanke heard nothing. A moment later he was enlightened by Asshlin's loud voice.

"Did you ever hear of a thing like that, James?" he exclaimed. "What would you say to a daughter who rides races on the strand in the dark of an October evening, with the mist enough to give your horses their death? 'Pon my word——" His face reddened; then suddenly he paused and laughed. "After all, what's bred in the bone—eh, James?" he said. "I believe I'd have done the same myself at fifteen—maybe worse."

He checked himself, laughed again; then sighed. But catching Milbanke's eye, he threw off the momentary depression, and turned once more to Nance.

"Tell Hannah we won't wait any longer, like a good child!" he said. "There's no counting on that scallywag."

As the child went quickly to the door he motioned Milbanke to the table, and took his own place at its head.

"No ceremony here," he said. "This is Liberty Hall."

Taking up a decanter, he poured some sherry into his friend's glass; then, filling his own, drank the wine with evident satisfaction.

"Gradual decay is what we're suffering from here, James," he went on. "Everything in this country is too damned old. The only things in this house that have stood it are the wine and the silver. The rest—the woodwork, myself, and the linen—are unsound, as you see."

He laughed again with a shade of sarcasm, and pointed to where a large hole in the damask table-cloth was only partially concealed by a splendid salt-cellar of Irish silver.

"Accumulated time is the disease we're suffering from. 'Tisn't the man who uses his time in this country, but the man who kills it who's mastered the art of living. Oh, we're a wonderful people, James!"

He slowly drained and slowly refilled his glass.

As he laid down the decanter, the door opened and Nance appeared and quietly took her place at table. Almost immediately she was followed by Burke in a black coat and wearing a clean collar.

For a second Milbanke marvelled at the domestic arrangements that could compress a valet, a butler, and a coachman into one easy-going personality; the next, his attention was directed to two enormous dishes which were placed respectively before his host and himself.

"Just hermit's fare, James—the product of the land!" Asshlin exclaimed, as Burke uncovered the first dish, revealing a gigantic turkey. "Will you cut yourself a shaving of ham?"

With a passing sense of impotence Milbanke gazed at the great, glistening ham; then the healthy appetite that exposure to the sea air had aroused, lent him courage, and he picked up a carving knife.

But the execution of the ham was destined to postponement. Scarcely had he straightened himself to the task, than a quick bang of the outer door was followed by hasty steps across the hall, and the last member of the household appeared upon the scene.

Almost before he saw her, Milbanke was conscious of her voice—high and clear with youthful vitality, softened and rendered piquant by native intonation.

"Oh, father, such a gallop! Such fun! And I won. The bay cob was nowhere beside Polly. Larry was mad!"

The string of words was poured forth in irresistible excitement before she had reached the door. Once inside, she paused abruptly—her whole animated face flushing.

"Oh, I forgot!" she said in sudden naïve dismay.

She made a quaint picture as she stood there in the light of the candles and the fire—her slight, immature figure arrayed in a worn and old-fashioned riding habit, her hair covered by a boy's cloth cap, her fingers clasping one of her father's heavy hunting crops. But it was neither dress nor attitude that drew Milbanke's eyes from the task before him—that incontinently sent his mind back thirty years to the days when Denis Asshlin had seemed to stand on the threshold of life and look forth, as by Right Divine, upon the pageant of the future. There was little physical likeness between the girl brimming with youth and vitality and the hard, prematurely-aged man sitting at the head of the table; but the blood that glowed in the warm olive skin, the spirit that danced and gleamed in the hazel eyes, was the same blood and the same spirit that had captivated Milbanke more than a quarter of a century before.

The unlooked-for sensation held him spell-bound. But almost rudely the spell was broken. Scarcely had Clodagh's exclamation of dismay escaped her, than Asshlin broke into one of his boisterous laughs.

"Forgot, did you?" he cried. "Well, 'twas like you. Come here!"

He put out his hand, and as he did so, a sudden expression of pride and affection softened his hard face.

"Here's the wildest scapegrace of an Asshlin you've met yet, James," he said.

"Shake hands with him, Clo!" he added in a different voice. "He's a symbol, if you only knew it. He stands for the great glory we must all leave behind us. The glory of youth!" His voice sank suddenly to a lower key, and he raised his glass. "Go on, child!" he added more quickly. "Shake hands with him; tell him he's welcome."

But Clodagh's flow of speech had been silenced. With a suggestion of the shyness that marked her sister, she came round the table as Milbanke rose.

She made no remark as she proffered her hand, and she did not smile as Nance had done. Instead, her bright eyes scanned his face with a quick, questioning interest.

In return, he looked at her clear skin, her level eyebrows and proudly held head; and his awkwardness vanished as he took the slight muscular hand still cold from the night mist.

"How d'you do?" he said. "I've been hearing of you."

Again Clodagh coloured, and glanced at her father.

"What were you telling him, father?" she asked with native curiosity.

Once more Asshlin laughed loudly.

"Listen to her, James," he said banteringly. "Her conscience is troubling her. She knows that it's hard to speak well of her. Isn't that it, scamp? Confess now!"

Clodagh had again passed round the table; and, having thrown her whip and cap into a chair, had seated herself without ceremony in the vacant place that awaited her.

"Indeed it isn't!" she replied with immense unconcern. But an instant later she repeated her question.

"What was it, father? Can't you tell me?"

Asshlin lifted his glass and studied the light through his sherry.

"Ah now, listen to her, James!" he exclaimed again delightedly. "And women will tell you they aren't inquisitive."

Clodagh flushed.

The little sister, seeing the flush, was suddenly moved to assert herself.

"'Twasn't anything, Clo," she said quickly. "He only said you were a scallywag."

Then, as all eyes turned in her direction, she subsided abruptly into confused silence.

"There you are again, James! Look at the way they stick together. A poor man hasn't the ghost of a chance when two of them join forces. One of them ought to have been a boy—if only for the sake of equality."

He shook his head and laughed afresh, while Burke deposited the last plate upon the table, and dinner began in earnest.

That dinner, like his drive from Muskeere, was an experience to Milbanke. More than once his eyes travelled involuntarily from the candle-lit table, with its suggestion of another and an earlier era, to the high walls where the fire cast long shafts of ruddy light and long tongues of shadow upon Asshlin's ancestors, painted in garments of silk and lace that had once found a setting in this same sombre room. There was something strangely analogous in these dead men and women and their living representatives. The thought recurred to him again and again, as he yielded to the pleasant influences of good wine and wholesome food pressed upon him with unceasing hospitality. It was not the first time he had pandered to his taste for past things by comparing a man with his forefathers, but the result had never proved quite so profitable. In their uncommon setting, Asshlin and his children would have appealed to the most unobservant as uncommon types; viewed by the eyes of a student, they became something more; they became types of an uncommon race—of an uncommon class.

With the spur of the old fascination and the goad of the new-born misgiving, he glanced again and yet again from his host's hard, handsome features to the pictures, from the pictures to the warm-coloured faces of the children. The study was absorbing. It supplied him with an agreeable undercurrent of interest while the ham and turkey were removed, and Asshlin, with much dexterity, distributed portions of an immense apple-pie, deluged in cream; it still occupied his mind when—cheese having been placed upon the table and partaken of—Burke proceeded to remove the cloth.

At the moment that the polished surface of the table was laid bare, his glance, temporarily distracted from its study of the nearer pictures, was attracted and arrested by one portrait, that hung in partial shadow above the carved chimneypiece. It was the picture of a tall, slight boy of sixteen or seventeen years, dressed in the black satin knee breeches, the diamond shoe buckles, and powdered queue of a past generation.

Something in the pose of this painted figure, something in the youthful face, caught and held his attention. In unconscious scrutiny, he leant forward to study the shadowed features; then Asshlin, suddenly aware of his interest, leant across the table.

"That was what I meant, James, by saying one of them should have been a boy," he said sharply. "Haven't I justification?"

He nodded half earnestly, half in malicious humour towards the picture above the fire.

For a moment Milbanke was at a loss; then all at once he comprehended his host's meaning. His gaze dropped from the picture to Clodagh, sitting below it. Above the dark riding habit and above the satin coat, it seemed that the same olive skin, the same level eyebrows and clear hazel eyes confronted him.

"I see!" he said quietly. "I see! A very peculiar case of family likeness."

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."

There was an awkward silence while he filled the two glasses and pushed one towards his guest.

But Milbanke's ease of mind had already been upset. He held no key to the disconcerting situation; and it puzzled and perplexed him, as his first impression of his old friend had done. Both possessed elements that he vaguely knew to be hidden from his sight—out of focus from his present point of view. For a space he sat warily fingering his glass, but making no attempt to drink. Without openly seeming to observe it, he was conscious of Asshlin's half-humorous, half-aggressive mood; of the nervous attitude of the younger girl, and of Clodagh's flushed face.

To a newly arrived guest, the position was strained. With growing embarrassment he glanced from the rich, dark wine in his glass to its reflection in the polished surface of the table. Finally the awkwardness of the prolonged silence moved him to speech.

"A great-grandfather who was a judge of wine is always worthy of consideration," he murmured amiably, as he lifted the glass to his lips. "I'm afraid mine was a teetotaller."

But his feeble attempt at humour was not destined to be successful. It drew a laugh from his host, but it was a laugh that found no echo.

"You're right, James!" Asshlin cried. "By Jupiter, you're right! Anthony Asshlin was the finest man in the county—and I'm proud of him."

"He was the worst man in the county—and the greatest fool!"

The words, so sudden and unexpected, came from Clodagh. For several seconds she had been sitting absolutely still; but now she lifted her head again, her flushed face glowing, her bright eyes alight with the quick enthusiasm, the hot temper that she had inherited from her race. With a swift movement she turned from her father to Milbanke.

"Do you think it great to be a fool—and a gambler?" she demanded.

Asshlin set down his glass noisily.

"Anthony Asshlin was no gambler," he said. "He was a sportsman."

Clodagh's lip curled.

"A sportsman!" she exclaimed. "Is it sport to keep game-cocks, to play cards, and throw dice? To squander money that belongs to other people? To mortgage your property and to—to—to kill your brother?"

The last words burst from her impetuously, impulsively; then suddenly she paused, shocked by her own daring.

The silence that followed was short. With an equal impetuosity, Asshlin pushed back his chair and rose.

"By Gad, Clo, that's going too far!" he cried. "I'll not hear my great-grandfather called a murderer."

"All the same, he killed his brother."

"In a duel. Gentlemen had to fight in those days."

"Because of cards! Because they quarrelled over cards!"

Then, with a fresh change of expression, she appealed again to Milbanke.

"Do you think that's sport?" she asked. "To get no good out of ordinary things? To get no pleasure out of dogs or horses except the pleasure of making them fight or race so that you can bet on the one you think best?"

She stopped breathlessly; and Milbanke, desperately at a loss, gazed from one angry, excited face to the other. But he was saved the trouble of finding an answer; for immediately Clodagh ceased to speak, Asshlin's loud laugh broke in again.

"Bravo!" he cried boisterously. "All the eloquence and all the lack of logic of your sex! But don't put those propositions to Milbanke; put them to yourself when you've reached his age. If you can't tell at fifty-five why poor human creatures play and kill and make fools of themselves, you'll have been a very lucky woman."

For an instant his voice dropped, the despondency, the restless ennui that Milbanke had previously noticed falling like a brief shadow over his anger. But the lapse was brief. With another laugh and a shrug of the shoulders, he turned suddenly, and, crossing the room, opened the door.

"Burke!" he called loudly across the hall. "Burke, bring more candles and another bottle of port—and the cards!"

At the words Clodagh rose.

"Father!" she exclaimed below her breath. Then her voice faltered. The involuntary note of protest and appeal was checked by some other emotion. With a swift movement she crossed the hearth, picked up her whip and cap, and, without another glance or word, walked out of the room, followed noiselessly by Nance.

Asshlin continued to stand by the door until the figures of his children had disappeared; then he turned back into the room.

"James," he said suddenly, "perhaps you don't think it, but one hair of that child's head is more precious to me than life. She's an Asshlin to the tips of her fingers. She's the whole race of us in one. The very way she repudiates us is proof enough for any man. I tell you the whole lot of us—lock, stock, and barrel—are looking at you out of her eyes."

Again he paused; then again he shook off his passing seriousness with nervous excitability, reseating himself at the table, as Burke entered.

"Ah, here we are!" he cried. "Here we are! Come along, Burke, and show the light of heaven to us. Now, James, for any stakes you like—and at any game! What shall it be? Piquet? Or will we say Euchre, for the sake of the days that are dead and gone? Very well. Euchre let it be—for any stakes you like. It's the land of beggars, but, by Gad, you'll find us game? Pass me your glass for another taste of port."

CHAPTER IV

The unpleasant sensation of moving in the dark remained with Milbanke while Asshlin, still noisily excited, arranged the stakes, cut for the deal, and, having won the cut, distributed the cards. By nature he was lethargic and placid; by habit he was precise, methodical, and commonplace. The advent into this new atmosphere, with its inexplicable suggestions and volcanic outbursts, left him distressed and ill at ease. He was the type of man who, in every relation of life, likes to know exactly where he stands. Having once satisfied himself upon that point, he was usually content to follow the routine of existence without trouble to those around him; but until it was fully defined, he was a prey to a vague uneasiness.

So absorbed was he by the trend of his own speculations, that for the first five games he gave but small consideration to the play. Then, however, his host jogged his attention with no uncertain hand.

Pausing in the shuffling of the cards, he glanced across the table.

"You're playing like an old woman, James. Are your wits wool-gathering, that you've let me win every blessed game?"

Milbanke looked up. "Forgive me," he said hastily—"forgive me. I was thinking——"

"—Thinking that a broken-down devil of an Irishman isn't high enough game to fly at?" Asshlin laughed. "Well, I'll put some life into you. I'll double the stakes. What do you say to that?"

He leant back in his chair, balancing the pack of cards in his hands.

Milbanke, with suddenly awakened observation, saw that his eyes glittered with excitement and that his lips were set.

"Double the stakes?" he echoed doubtfully. "Oh, certainly if you think it will improve the game. For myself I rarely play for money! I always think that the cards——"

"—Are sufficient in themselves, I suppose?" Asshlin laughed. "Don't you believe it, James? Or if you do, I'll teach you better. Come along! In for a penny, in for a pound! Are you agreeable?"

For a moment Milbanke was thoughtful; then he became conscious of the other's impatient glance.

"Why—why certainly," he said. "Anything you like!"

"Spoken like a man!" Asshlin impulsively threw down the cards, and then gathered them up again. "I see the embalming process isn't completed yet. The antiquarians have left a shred or two of frail humanity in you. Well, we'll have it out. We'll put an edge on it. Come along!" He leant forward, the reckless brightness deepening in his eyes.

But Milbanke hesitated.

"Hadn't we better settle up the first score and start afresh?" he said. "How do we stand?"

He put his hand into his pocket. But the other waived the point.

"Is it paying at this hour of the night?" he cried. "Give me a pencil, and I'll jot down our difference, if you're conscientious. But the balance will be on the other side before the candles are burned out. The devil forgot to bring luck to the Asshlins since poor Anthony went below. But come along, man!—come along! Here's to the youth of us!"

He drained his glass; and turned again to the business of the cards.

During the next half-dozen games neither spoke. With deep absorption, Asshlin followed the run of the cards. Once or twice an exclamation escaped him; once or twice he paused to replenish Milbanke's glass or his own; but in every other respect he had eyes and thoughts for nothing but the business in hand. Milbanke, on the contrary—gambler neither by instinct nor training—was infinitely more interested in his opponent than in the play.

As he watched Asshlin, a score of recollections rose to his mind—recollections that time and advancing age had all but effaced. He recalled the numberless occasions upon which the Irishman, in the exuberance of youth, had sat over a gaming-table until the daylight had streamed in across the scattered cards, the heaped-up cigar-ashes and the emptied glasses; he reviewed the rare occasions on which his cajoleries had drawn him from his own mild pursuits to be a sharer in these prolonged revels; and with the memory came the thought of the headache, the sick sense of weariness that had invariably lain in wait for him the following morning. A wondering admiration for Asshlin had always held a place in these jaded after-sensations—a species of hero-worship for one who could turn into bed at four in the morning and emerge at nine with all the vigour and vitality of the most virtuous sleeper. He had never fully realised that to men of Asshlin's stamp dissipation, excitement, and action are potent stimulants, calling forth all the superfluous nervous energy that by nature they possess. While the tide of life runs high about such men, they are borne forward, buoyed up by their own capacity for living and enjoying. To them, existence at high pressure is a glorious, exalted state, exempt from satiety or fatigue; it is the quieter phases of existence—the phases that to ordinary men mean rest, peace, domestic tranquillity and domestic interests—that these exuberant, ardent human beings have cause to dread.

An hour went by, and still the idea of a past, curiously reflected and curiously contradicted, absorbed Milbanke's perceptions. Then gradually but decisively it was borne in upon his mind that his absorption was blunting his common sense. He was playing execrably.

It has been said that he was no gambler; but neither was he a fool. With something of a shock he realised that he stood a loser to the extent of seven or eight pounds. With the realisation he sat straighter in his chair. It was not that he grudged the money. He was generous—and could afford generosity. It was rather that that admirable quality which urges the Englishman to play a losing game was stirred within him.

"By Jove, Denis!" he said. "I must look to my laurels! I used to play a better game than this."

Asshlin's only answer was a laugh—a laugh from which all the bitterness had dropped away, leaving a buoyant ring of absorption and delight. Under the stimulus of excitement, he had altered. He was exalted, lifted above the petty discontent, the pessimism, the despondency that tainted his empty days.

And so for nearly two hours they played steadily; then Milbanke paused and drew out his watch.

"I don't know what sort of hours you keep in Ireland," he hazarded; "but it's nearly twelve o'clock."

Asshlin had paused to snuff one of the candles that had begun to gutter. At the other's words, he glanced up in undisguised surprise.

"Hours?" he repeated. "Why, any—or none at all. You don't know the glory of having something to sit up for." He paused for a second in a sort of ecstasy. "You don't know it; you can't know it! You have never felt the abomination of desolation."

He laughed feverishly and gathered up the cards afresh.

"Come, James! Your deal!"

And in this manner the night wore on. In the early stages of their play Asshlin's luck stuck to him determinately; but by degrees his opponent's more cautious and level play began to tell, and their positions were gradually reversed. By one o'clock Milbanke had made good his losses and even stood with some trifling amount to his advantage. Here again he had mildly suggested a cessation; but Asshlin, more intoxicated by bad than he had been by good fortune, had demanded his revenge, and called loudly through the quiet house for more candles and more wine.

But with the fresh round of play, the luck remained unaltered. Milbanke continued to win.

With a sleepy face, but no expression of surprise, Burke responded to his master's call, replenishing the light and setting the port upon the table. But the players scarcely noticed his entrance or departure. Asshlin was playing with desperate recklessness; and Milbanke, without intent or consciousness, was slowly falling under the influence of his companion's excitement. As minute succeeded minute and Asshlin sat rigid in his seat—cutting, dealing, marking the result of each game upon a strip of paper—the elder man became more and more the satellite of thirty years ago, less and less the placid archaeologist for whom the follies of the present lie overshadowed by the past.

He forgot the long journey of the afternoon, the peculiar incidents of his arrival. A slight flush rose to his usually bloodless cheeks; he found himself watching the run of the cards with a species of reflected eagerness, roused to an unaccustomed elation when the advantage fell to him.

At three o'clock they played the last round. And it was only then—when the last card had been thrown on the table, and he had risen stiff from long sitting, the winner of something like twenty pounds—that he realised how completely he had been dominated by this resurrected influence; dominated to the exclusion of personal prejudice and even personal comfort. So strong was this impression of past influences that he was roused to no surprise when, glancing at his companion, he saw him temporarily rejuvenated—his expression alert, his whole face vivified by the night's excitement.

Again a touch of the old sympathy arose within him. The reckless, cynical man before him was momentarily effaced; the bright personality of long ago seemed to fill the room.

"Good-night, Denis!" he said gently, holding out his hand.

Asshlin caught it enthusiastically.

"Good-night, James!—good-night! And once more a thousand welcomes and a thousand thanks. You have been a drop of water in the desert to a parching man. Good-night, and pleasant dreams to you! I'll reckon up my losses in the morning and write you a cheque. Good-night!"

Milbanke responded to the pressure of his fingers.

"Don't trouble about the money," he said. "Any time will do—any time. But you're turning in yourself? We'll be upstairs together?"

But Asshlin shook his head.

"Not yet," he said. "Not after this. I'll take a turn across the fields and have a look at the night on the water. I feel too much awake to be smothered by sheets and blankets. It isn't often we feel life here—and the sensation is glorious."

He drew up his tall, powerful figure and stretched out his arms. Then almost at once he let them fall to his sides.

"But what moonshine this is to you, you prosaic Saxon!" he exclaimed. "Let me light you to bed."

He laughed quickly; and, picking up one of the massive candlesticks, moved towards the door.

For an instant Milbanke lingered in the dining-room, grown dimmer with the departing lights; then, hearing his name in his host's voice, he hurried after him into the hall.

Asshlin was standing at the foot of the stairs, the glowing candles held aloft. Above him, the high ceiling loomed shadowy and indistinct; behind him, the dark wainscoted wall threw his figure into bold relief.

It would have demanded but a slight stretch of fancy to picture him as his satin-coated great-grandfather grown to a dissipated maturity, as he stood there, the master spirit in this house of fallen greatness. As Milbanke reached his side, he laughed once more, precisely as Anthony Asshlin might have laughed, standing at the foot of the same staircase nearly a hundred years ago. The taint of heredity seemed to wrap him round—to gleam in his unnaturally bright eyes, to reverberate in his voice.

"Up with you, James!" he cried. "I needn't put your hand on the banister, like I have to do with some of my guests. You never yet drank a swerve into your steps. Well, I don't blame you for it. It's men like you that keep heaven a going concern, while poor devils like me are paving the lower regions. Good-night to you!"

With a fresh laugh he thrust the great candlestick into the other's hand and turned on his heel.

Milbanke remained motionless, while Asshlin passed across the hall and opened the door, letting in a breath of fresh, damp air that set the candle-flames dancing; then, as the door closed again, he turned and put his hand on the banister.

It was with a feeling of unreality, mingled with the borrowed excitement still at work within him, that he began his ascent of the stairs. The natural fatigue consequent on the day's journey had been temporarily dispelled, and sleep seemed something distant and almost unattractive. As he mounted the creaking steps, moving cautiously out of consideration for the sleeping household, he found himself wishing incontinently that he had offered his company to his host in his stroll towards the sea.

As the desire came to him, he paused. He could still overtake Asshlin! He hesitated, glancing from the closed door of his bedroom to the hall lying below him in a well of shadow. Then suddenly he raised his head, attracted by a sound, subdued and yet distinct, that came to him through the silence of the house—the sound of light, hasty steps on an uncarpeted corridor.

In the wave of surprise that swept over him he forgot his recent excitement, his recent wish for action and fresh air. Lifting the candlestick above his head, he peered along the passage that stretched away beyond his own door. But the scrutiny was momentary. Almost at once he lowered the candles and drew back, as he recognised the figure of Clodagh coming towards him out of the gloom. She was wearing a flowing, old-fashioned dressing-gown of some flowered material; one strand of her brown hair had been loosened, and fell across her forehead, shadowing her eyes into something of the beauty they were yet to wear. And as Milbanke looked at her, he realised with a stirring of something like embarrassment, that a touch of promise, very gracious and infinitely feminine, had replaced the first, half-boyish impression that he had received of her.

But if he felt embarrassment, it was evident that she was conscious of none. As she came within a few yards of him she halted for an instant to assure herself of his identity; then, her mind satisfied, she stepped straight onward into the light of the six candles.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she said quickly. "I was afraid for a minute that it was father. I've been waiting up for you," she added hastily. "I couldn't go to sleep till I'd seen you."

Milbanke was confused. Moved by an undefined impulse, he extinguished three of the six candles.

"Indeed!" he said. "But it's very late. You must—you must be tired."

He glanced uncertainly round the landing, as if seeking a chair to offer her. Then an idea struck him.

"Will you come downstairs?" he suggested. "The fire is still alight in the dining-room. You—you must be cold as well as tired."

He looked hesitatingly at her light gown.

But Clodagh shook her head.

"We mustn't go down," she said. "He might come in and find us—and then we'd have a row. He and I of course, I mean," she added politely.

Then, as if impatient of the preamble, she plunged into the subject she had at heart.

"Mr. Milbanke," she said, "will you promise me not to—not to, after to-night——?"

Milbanke's face looked blank.

"Not to what?" he asked.

"Oh, not to encourage him—not to play with him. He's ruining himself and ruining us all. Couldn't you guess it from dinner—from the quarrel we had? Oh, he's so terribly foolish!"

Her voice suddenly trembled.

But he was labouring under the shock her revelation had given him.

"Good heavens!" he stammered. "I had no idea—no idea of such a thing."

"No; I know you hadn't—I was sure you hadn't." Her voice thrilled with quick relief.

"No, no. Certainly not. But tell me about it. Dear me!—dear me! I had no idea of such a thing."

"Oh, it began ages ago—before mother died. Burke says 'twas the life—the quiet life after England. He came home, you know, when his father died, and he found the place in a bad way. He has never been rich enough to live out of the country, and he has never stopped fretting for the things that aren't here. But while mother lived he kept pretty good; 'twas after she died that he seemed not to care. First he got gloomy and sad, then he got reckless and terrible. People were frightened of him. His friends began to drop away."

She paused for a moment, glancing down into the hall to assure herself that all was quiet.

"It's been the same ever since. Sometimes he's gloomy and depressed, other times he's wild, like to-night. And when he's wild, he's mad for cards. Oh, you don't know what it's like! It's like being a drunkard—only different—and worse. When he's like that, he'd play with any one—for anything. Last week he had a dreadful man—a horse-dealer from Muskeere—staying here with him for three days. They played cards every night—played till three or four in the morning. Father lost all the ready money in the house, and nearly emptied the stables."

Milbanke stood before her horrified and absorbed. An understanding of many things, before obscure, had come to him while she was speaking; and with the knowledge, a sudden deep pity for this child of his old friend—a sudden sense of guilt at his own blindness, his own weakness.

"Miss Clodagh," he said quickly, in his stiff, formal voice. Then he paused, as she raised her hand with a sharp gesture of attention.

A heavy step sounded on the gravel outside the house. There was an instant's hesitation; then Clodagh leant forward with swift presence of mind and blew out the three remaining candles.

"You understand now?" she whispered.

"Yes," he murmured, below his breath. "Yes; I understand."

A moment later he heard her flit down the corridor, and heard Asshlin open the heavy outer door.

CHAPTER V

Thus it was that James Milbanke entered on his first night at Orristown. The surprise, the excitement, and the culminating incident of the evening would have been disturbing to a man of even more placid temperament; and rebel as he might against the weakness, he lay awake considerably longer than was his wont in the uncomfortable, canopied bed, listening to the numberless infinitesimal sounds that break the silence of a sleeping house—from the faint, occasional cracking of the furniture to the scurrying of a mouse behind the plaster of the walls. Then gradually, as his ears became accustomed to these minor noises, another sound, unnoticed in the activity of the earlier hours, obtruded itself softly but persistently upon his consciousness—the subdued and regular breaking of the sea on the rocks below the house.

A slight sense of annoyance was his first feeling, for it was many years since he had slept by the sea; then quietly, lingeringly, soothingly the rhythmical persistence of the sound began to tell. Imperceptibly the confusing ideas of the evening became pleasantly indistinct—the numberless contradictory feelings blurred into one delightful sensation of indifference and repose. With the salt, moist air, borne to him through the open window, and the great untiring lullaby of the ocean rising and falling upon his senses, like the purring of a gigantic cat, he fell asleep.

His first sensation upon waking the next morning was one of pleasure—the placid, unquestioning satisfaction that comes to the untroubled mind with the advent of a fine day. To his simple taste, the sights and sounds that met his waking consciousness were possessed of an unaccustomed charm. With daylight, the room that last night had held grim and even ghostly suggestions, took on a more human and more friendly air. The ancient mahogany furniture seemed anxious to reflect the morning sunshine; the massive posts of the bed with their drapery of faded repp no longer glowered upon the intruder. Each object was bathed in, and rejuvenated by, the golden warmth, the incomparable mellow radiance of sea and sky that flowed in at the open window.

For a while he lay in contemplative enjoyment of this early, untainted atmosphere, while the sounds of the awakening day gradually rose above the soft beating of the outgoing tide—falling upon his ears in a pleasant, primitive medley of clacking fowls, joyous, yelping dogs, and stamping horses. For a space he lay still; then the inevitable wish to take active part in this world created from the darkness and the silence of the night aroused him; and, slipping out of bed, he drew on a dressing-gown and walked to the window.

The sight that met his eyes was one of infinite beauty. The delicacy—the poetry—the subtle, unnameable charm that lie in the hollow of Nature's hand were over land and sky and sea; the warmth and wealth of summer stretched before him, but summer mellowed and softened by a golden autumnal haze.

There are more inspiring countries than Ireland—countries more richly dowered in vegetation; countries more radiant in atmosphere and brilliant in colouring: but there is no land where the Hand of the Maker is more poignantly felt; where the mystic spirit of creation—the wonderful, tender, pathetic sense of the Beginning—has been so strangely preserved. As Milbanke stood at the open window, his eyes travelled without interruption over the wide green fields—neither lawn nor meadow—that spread from the house to the shore, owning no boundary wall beyond the low, shelving rocks of red sandstone that rose a natural barrier against the encroachments of the tide. And from the fields his gaze wandered onward, drawn irresistibly and inevitably to the sea itself—the watchful, tyrannical guardian of the silent land.

It lay before him like a tremendous glassy lake, stretching in one untroubled sweep from Orristown to the point, three miles away, where the purple headland of Carrigmore completed the semicircle of the bay. The silence, the majesty of that sweep of water was indescribable. From the rim of yellow sand, which the indolent waves were lapping, to the misted horizon, not one sign of human life marred the smoothness of its surface. Across the bay at Carrigmore a few spirals of smoke rose from the cluster of pink and white cottages lying under the shadow of the Round Tower; on the long, sandy strand a couple of bare-legged boys were leisurely raking up the sea-weed that the waves had left, and slowly piling it on a waiting donkey butt; but the sea itself was undisturbed. It lay as it might have lain on the first day of completed creation—mystical, sublime, untouched.

Milbanke was no poet, yet the scene impressed him. The extraordinary sense of an inimitable and impenetrable peace before which man and man's mere transitory concerns are dwarfed, if not entirely eliminated, touched him vaguely. It was with a tinge of something bordering upon reluctance that he at last drew his eyes from the picture and began to dress.

But once freed from the spell of the ocean, his mind reverted to the other interests that lay closer at hand. He found himself wondering how his entertainers would appear on a second inspection; whether, like his room, they would take on a more commonplace semblance with the advent of daylight. The touch of irrepressible and human curiosity that the speculation aroused gave a spur to the business of dressing; and it was well under the twenty minutes usually devoted to his neat and careful toilet when he found himself crossing the corridor and descending the stairs.

He encountered no one as he passed through the hall; and catching a fresh suggestion of sunshine through the door that stood hospitably open, he paused for an instant to take a cursory glance at the gravelled sweep that terminated the drive, and the grassy slope surmounted by a fringe of beeches that formed the outlook from the front of the house. Then he turned quickly, and, recrossing the hall, passed into the dining-room.

None of the household had yet appeared, but here also the daylight had worked changes.

The curtains were drawn back, permitting the view of fields and sea, that he had already studied from his bedroom, to break uninterruptedly through the three lofty windows. The effect was one of extreme airiness and light; and it was quite a minute before his gaze turned to the darker side of the room, where the portrait of the famous Anthony Asshlin hung above the fire.

Realising that he was alone in the big room, he crossed to the table where breakfast was already laid—the remains of the enormous ham rising from an untidy paper frill to defy the attacks of the largest appetite. In the brilliance of the light, the fineness of the table linen and its state of dilapidation were both accentuated, as was the genuine beauty and intrinsic value of the badly kept silver.

But Milbanke had no time to absorb these details, for instantly he reached the table his eye was caught by a folded slip of paper lying by his place. With a touch of surprise he stooped forward and picked it up; then a wave of annoyance, almost of guilt, succeeded the surprise as he realised that it was a cheque made out in Asshlin's straggling handwriting for his losses of the night before.

As he fingered it uncomfortably a vivid remembrance of his interview with Clodagh rose to his mind. He thought of the poverty, suggested rather than expressed by the girl's words; he thought of the Muskeere horse-dealer who had all but emptied the stables. With a puckered brow he studied his own name scrawled across the cheque; then, with a sense of something like duplicity, he hurriedly pushed it under his plate as he heard the hall door close, and footsteps sound across the hall. A moment later Asshlin, followed by his two daughters, entered the room.

All three greeted him in turn; then Asshlin crossed to the fire and proceeded to stir it to a blaze, while Nance and Clodagh passed to their appointed places.

Both girls looked pleasantly in keeping with the fresh morning—their rich, youthful colouring having nothing to fear from the searching light. Nance was dressed in a very clean blue cotton frock that accentuated the colour of her eyes; but Clodagh was again attired in the old-fashioned riding-habit, though this time the boy's cap was absent, and the sunshine caught reflections in her light brown hair.

"I hope you don't mind my being dressed like this," she said, as she took her seat. "I always have a ride in the mornings, and I generally tidy up for breakfast; but I'm riding a race at ten with Larry—my cousin, you know—so 'twouldn't be worth while to change to-day."

She spoke quite naturally, encountering Milbanke's eyes with no suggestion of embarrassment for last night's adventure.

He met her glance for an instant; then his own wandered guiltily to the corner of the cheque protruding from under his plate.

"Not at all!" he said hurriedly—"not at all! I hope I may be permitted to see the race."

Clodagh smiled.

"Of course—if you like," she said. "But it won't be much to look at." She added this with a quick glance that ineffectually attempted to gauge the guest's tastes and powers of appreciation.

"'Twill be grand!" murmured Nance softly. "And I know who's going to win."

"Nonsense!" said Clodagh. "I won in the practice last night, but the strand was wet, and the cob is only sure on hard ground."