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 a.s.shlin'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 gla.s.s; 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 d.a.m.ned 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.

"Acc.u.mulated 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 gla.s.s.

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!" a.s.shlin exclaimed, as Burke uncovered the first dish, revealing a gigantic turkey. "Will you cut yourself a shaving of ham?"

With a pa.s.sing sense of impotence Milbanke gazed at the great, glistening ham; then the healthy appet.i.te 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 nave 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 att.i.tude that drew Milbanke's eyes from the task before him--that incontinently sent his mind back thirty years to the days when Denis a.s.shlin 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 a.s.shlin 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 a.s.shlin 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 gla.s.s. "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 a.s.shlin 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 pa.s.sed 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?"

a.s.shlin lifted his gla.s.s 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 a.s.sert 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 a.s.shlin's ancestors, painted in garments of silk and lace that had once found a setting in this same sombre room. There was something strangely a.n.a.logous 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, a.s.shlin and his children would have appealed to the most un.o.bservant as uncommon types; viewed by the eyes of a student, they became something more; they became types of an uncommon race--of an uncommon cla.s.s.

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 a.s.shlin, 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.