The Gambler Part 33

She looked involuntarily at Milbanke.

But Milbanke's eyes were on the groups of hotel guests, already moving towards the dining-room.

"Don't you think we might--might make a move----?" he hazarded vaguely.

There was a very slight pause; then Serracauld responded to the suggestion.

"You are quite right!" he said easily. "I expect my uncle is looking for me; he usually gets fidgety about feeding time. Will you excuse me, Mrs. Milbanke? Perhaps later on I shall have the chance of correcting that inexperience you accuse me of."

He laughed pleasantly; and with a courteous gesture, disappeared into the crowd that was fast filing out of the hall.

As he disappeared, Clodagh turned towards the dining-room, leaving Milbanke and Barnard to follow; but she had scarcely crossed the hall, when the latter overtook her.

"Well, Mrs. Milbanke," he said genially, "what do you think of our young friend? I believe he usually finds favour in ladies' eyes."

She glanced up.

"I think him very charming," she said candidly. "Who is he? Do you know him well?"

Barnard smiled.

"I have known him since he was a boy at Eton. He is nephew of the famous Earl of Deerehurst who, according to rumour, spends three hundred a year on silk socks, and bathes every morning in scented milk."

Clodagh made an exclamation of disgust.

"What an abominable person!"

Again Barnard smiled.

"Well, I don't quite know," he said tolerantly. "Rumour is generally a yard or two in front of reality. Perhaps Deerehurst is rather a mummified old _roue_; but then, you know, embalming is a clean process, Mrs. Milbanke, before, as well as after, death. I sometimes wonder whether Valentine won't put the family money to even less harmless use if he ever succeeds to the t.i.tle. He is next in the succession, but for one feeble life."

Clodagh's eyes opened.

"Really!" she said. "I should never have connected him with so much responsibility."

Barnard looked down at her.

"Responsibility!" he said. "I don't think I should call it responsibility! But what has become of James?"

He paused, and glanced round the fast emptying hall.

As he did so, Milbanke hurried up, his manner newly interested, his thin face flushed.

"Who do you think I have just seen, Clodagh?" he asked excitedly. "Mr.

Angelo Tombs--that interesting scientist who joined our party at Pisa last year!"

Clodagh looked round.

"What?" she said in surprise. "The big, untidy-looking man, who had written a book on something terribly unp.r.o.nounceable?"

Milbanke nodded gravely.

"Yes," he said. "A most interesting and exhaustive work. I shall make a point of congratulating him upon it directly we have finished dinner."

"And what about me?" Barnard eyed him quizzically.

"You! Oh, you must wait, David! You will understand that a man like Mr.

Tombs is not to be met with every day."

They were entering the dining-room as Milbanke spoke; and involuntarily Barnard glanced from the precise, formal figure of his friend, to the youthful, attractive form of his friend's wife.

"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.

Dinner was half way through before Barnard returned to his task of studying her individually; then he turned to her with his most suavely confidential manner.

"Have you been very gay in Florence this season?" he asked.

She looked up quickly.

"Gay?" she repeated. "Oh no! I don't think we are ever exactly gay."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Indeed!" he said. "You surprise me. There used to be quite an amusing English crowd at Florence."

Clodagh coloured, feeling vaguely conscious of some want in her social equipment.

"Oh, I didn't mean the other English residents," she corrected hastily.

"I meant ourselves--James and I."