Chapter III

Clodagh looked up, colouring afresh; and the young man bowed quickly and eagerly. He belonged to a type new to her, but familiar to every social Londoner: the type of young Englishman who, gifted with unusual height and fine possibilities of muscular development, saunters through life--physically and morally--exerting his energy and his strength in one direction only--the eternal, aimless, enervating search after personal pleasure.

To be explicit, the Honourable Valentine Serracauld was suffering from that most modern of complaints--the lack of surmountable obstacles. The nephew of one of the richest peers in England, he had started life heavily handicapped. A sufficiency of money had rendered work unnecessary; good looks and a naturally ingratiating manner had precluded the need for mental equipment; while his social position had unfairly protected him from any share in the rough and tumble existence that moulds and hardens a man's character. At fifteen, he had been an average healthy public schoolboy; at five-and-twenty, he was a fashionable young aristocrat, whose only business in life was the aiding and abetting of his uncle in the absorbing pursuit of killing time.

He bowed now to Clodagh with the extreme impressiveness that men of his type bestow upon a new and promising introduction.

"Charmed to meet you, Mrs. Milbanke!" he said. "Are you a resident here--or a bird of passage like ourselves?" He indicated Barnard.

Clodagh met his intent gaze with a renewed thrill of speculative pleasure.

"My husband and I live at Florence," she explained. "We are only here on business--which sounds a desecration."

Serracauld continued to watch her.

"Not if you have any share in it," he said in a low voice.

She laughed and blushed.

"I'm afraid you speak from inexperience," she said. "To the people who know me, I am a very prosaic person."

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 title. 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 unpronounceable?"

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."

Barnard's face became profoundly interested.

"But don't you care for society?" he said, his eyes travelling expressively over her pretty dress.

Again she coloured.

"It isn't that," she said in a low, quick voice. "James doesn't care about parties--or people----"

Barnard's lips parted to express surprise or sympathy; but she finished her sentence hastily.

"--And of course I like what he likes."

Barnard bent his head.

"Of course," he said enigmatically, and dropped back into silence.

For a time he remained apparently absorbed in his dinner. Then, as Clodagh began to wonder uncomfortably whether she had unwittingly offended him, he turned to her again.

"Mrs. Milbanke," he said softly, "would you think me very presumptuous if I were to make a little proposal?"

Clodagh brightened.

"Of course not! Say anything you like."

"You will be here for a week?"

"I--I hope so." She glanced covertly at Milbanke.

"Oh yes, you will! I shall arrange it."

She looked at him quickly.

"You?" she said. "How?"

"Never mind how!" He smiled reassuringly. "You will be here for a week; and my proposal is that, while Milbanke is settling his business, I should be allowed to introduce you to some English friends of mine who are in Venice just now. It may be presumptuous, but I seem to feel"--he hesitated for a moment--"I seem to feel that you want to make some new friends--that you want to have a good time. Forgive my being so very blunt!"

Clodagh sat silent. She felt no resentment at his words, but they vaguely embarrassed her. The new possibility thrilled her; yet insensibly she hesitated before it.

"But ought I to want new friends?" she asked at last in a very low and undecided voice.

Barnard laid down the glass that he was lifting to his lips, and looked at her quickly. Her freshness charmed, while her _naivete_ puzzled him.

"Well, Mrs. Milbanke," he said suddenly, "suppose we find that out?"

And, leaning forward, he addressed Milbanke.

"James," he said, "I have just been making a little suggestion. While you and I are putting our ancient heads together, don't you think Mrs. Milbanke ought to study her Venice--local colour--atmosphere--all that sort of thing?"

Milbanke turned in his seat.

"Eh, David?" he exclaimed. "What's that you say?"

"I was suggesting that Mrs. Milbanke should see a little of Venice now that she is here."

He indicated the long windows of the dining-room through which the sound of voices and music was already being borne on the purple twilight.

Milbanke's face became slightly disturbed.

"Of course!--of course!" he said vaguely. "But--but neither of us care much for conventional sight-seeing; and then, you know, my time here is limited."

"Exactly!--exactly what I was saying. Your time is valuable. All the more danger of Mrs. Milbanke's hanging heavy on her hands. Now, there are some charming people staying here at present, who would only be too delighted to make her visit pleasant."

Milbanke's expression cleared.

"Oh, well----" he began in a relieved voice.

"Exactly! Lady Frances Hope is here. You remember Lady Frances who married my cousin Sammy Hope--the red-headed little beggar who went into the Navy? She would be intensely interested in Mrs. Milbanke. I wish you would let me make them known to each other."

He smiled suavely, thoroughly in his element at the prospect of working a little social scheme.

Milbanke looked at Clodagh.

"What do you think, my dear?" he asked vaguely.

Clodagh looked down at her plate.

"I don't quite know," she murmured.

Barnard leant close to her in a confiding manner.

"Quite right, Mrs. Milbanke!" he said. "Never trouble to analyse your feelings. Just give them a free rein. Lady Frances Hope is a most charming woman. Always bright, always good-natured, always in the swim--if you understand that very expressive phrase."

Clodagh smiled as she helped herself to an ice. During their conversation, the dinner had drawn to its close; and here and there people were already rising from table and moving towards the hall or the long windows that opened on to the canal. Unconsciously her eyes turned in the direction of these open windows, through which a flood of light streamed out upon the water, bringing into prominence the dark gondolas that flitted perpetually to and fro like great black bats.

Seeing her glance, Barnard turned to her again.

"Shall we charter a gondola?" he asked. "It's the thing to do here?"

Her eyes sparkled.

"Oh, how lovely!" she said; then involuntarily her face fell and she looked at her husband.

"But perhaps----" she began deprecatingly.

As the word escaped her, Milbanke--who had been oblivious of the conversation--pushed back his chair and rose from table with a faint exclamation of excitement.

"Ah, there he is!" he said, his eyes fixed upon a distant corner of the room. "There he is! I must not run the risk of missing him!"

Clodagh turned to him eagerly.

"James," she began, "Mr. Barnard says----"

But Milbanke's mind was elsewhere.

"My dear," he said hurriedly, "you must really excuse me. A man like Mr. Angelo Tombs is a personage of importance."

"Yes; but, James----"

She paused, disconcerted. Milbanke had left the table.

For quite a minute she sat silent, her cheeks burning with a sudden sense of mortification and neglect. To a reasoning and experienced mind, the incident would have carried no weight; at most it would have offered grounds for a passing amusement. But with Clodagh the case was different. Circumstances had never demanded the cultivation of her reason, and experience was an asset she was not possessed of. To her sensitive, youthful susceptibilities, the incident could only wear one complexion. Her husband had obviously and wittingly humiliated her in presence of his friend.

She sat with tightened lips, staring unseeingly at the table.

Then suddenly and softly some one crossed the room behind her, and paused beside her chair. Turning with a little start, she saw the pale, clean-cut features and searching dark eyes of Valentine Serracauld.

"Mrs. Milbanke," he said at once in his easy, ingratiating voice. "If you are not doing anything else this evening, may I place my uncle's gondola at your disposal? Both he and I would be considerably honoured if you and your husband----"

Clodagh looked up into his face with a quick glance of pleasure and relief.

"Oh, thank you!" she said. "Thank you so very much! I should love to come, only my husband is--is busy to-night."

She paused; and in the pause Barnard leaned close to her again, with his most friendly and reassuring manner.

"After all, Mrs. Milbanke," he said, "do you think that need preclude you from the enjoyment? James is perfectly happy; Lord Deerehurst's gondola is quite the most comfortable in Venice; and I'm sure _I'm_ staid enough to play propriety! Suppose we make a party of four?"

Serracauld laughed delightedly.

"How splendid!" he said. "Mrs. Milbanke, may I find my uncle and bring him to be introduced?"

He bent forward quickly, leaning across Milbanke's empty chair.

For one second Clodagh sat irresolute; then she glanced swiftly from one interested, admiring face to the other, and again the blood rushed into her face in a wave of self-conscious pleasure.

"Yes," she said softly--"yes. Bring your uncle to be introduced."