Really, this
is so exceptional an occasion that I think--" he started up suddenly, as
a man will with a new and happy idea--"I certainly think that for once in
a way we might open a bottle of champagne."

Surprise and applause greeted this brilliant idea, and Hine cried out:

"I think champagne fine, don't you, Miss Skinner?"

He collapsed at his own boldness. Parminter shrugged his shoulders to
show that champagne was an every-day affair with him.

"It's drunk a good deal at the clubs nowadays," he said.

Meanwhile Garratt Skinner had not moved. He stood looking across the
table to his daughter.

"What do you say, Sylvia? It's an extravagance. But I don't have such
luck every day. It's in your honor. Shall we? Yes, then!"

He did not wait for an answer, but opened the door of a cupboard in the
sideboard, and there, quite ready, stood half a dozen bottles of
champagne. A doubt flashed into Sylvia's mind--a doubt whether her
father's brilliant idea was really the inspiration which his manner had
suggested. Those bottles looked so obviously got in for the occasion.
But Garratt Skinner turned to her apologetically, as though he divined
her thought.

"We don't run to a wine cellar, Sylvia. We have to keep what little stock
we can afford in here."

Her doubt vanished, but in an instant it returned again, for as her
father came round the table with the bottle in his hand, she noticed that
shallow champagne glasses were ready laid at every place. Garratt Skinner
filled the glasses and returned to his place.

"Sylvia," he said, and, smiling, he drank to her. He turned to his
companions. "Congratulate me!" Then he sat down.

The champagne thawed the tongues of the company, and as they spoke
Sylvia's heart sank more and more. For in word and thought and manner her
father's guests were familiar to her. She refused to acknowledge it, but
the knowledge was forced upon her. She had thought to step out of a world
which she hated, against which her delicacy and her purity revolted, and
lo! she had stepped out merely to take a stride and step down into it
again at another place.

The obsequious attentiveness of Captain Barstow, the vanity of Mr.
Parminter and his affected voice, suggesting that he came out of the
great world to this little supper party, really without any sense of
condescension at all, and the behavior of Walter Hine, who, to give
himself courage, gulped down his champagne--it was all horribly familiar.