med, 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 naive 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 adde