d round; then, as she met
Barnard's bland, amiable face, she blushed at her own emotions.

"Oh no!" she said in a low voice. "I--I never play cards."

Serracauld looked up quickly.

"What!" he exclaimed. "You don't play bridge?"

"I have never played any game of cards since I was a child."

The three men looked at her in unfeigned surprise.

"Not really, Mrs. Milbanke?"

Serracauld's eyes were wide with astonishment.

"Really !--quite really!"

"Why you are ethereal, Mrs. Milbanke," Barnard said laughingly, as the
gondola glided up to the palace steps. "The passport to humanity
nowadays is an inordinate love of risk."

Clodagh laughed nervously.

"Then I must be inhuman," she said.

The gondola stopped, and Lord Deerehurst rose. As he offered her his
hand, he looked searchingly into her face.

"Only time can prove the truth of that statement, Mrs. Milbanke!" he
said in his thin voice.

In the mystery of her surroundings, the words seemed to Clodagh to
possess a curious, almost a prophetic ring; and their echo lingered in
her ears as she stepped from the gondola and entered the palace. But
she was young; and to the young, action must ever outweigh suggestion.
She had scarcely mounted the old marble staircase before the excitement
of her impending ordeal sent all other ideas spinning into oblivion.
There was adventure and experience in every succeeding moment.

At the head of the stairs they were met by an English man-servant. He
stepped forward gravely, as if accustomed to the arrival of late
callers; and, relieving Clodagh of her cloak, ushered her down a long
corridor and through an arched doorway hidden by a velvet curtain.

The salon into which they were shown was large and high ceiled. The
walls displayed some allegorical studies in the fresco work of which
Barnard had spoken; the floor was bare of carpet and highly polished,
reflecting the elaborately designed but scanty furniture and the
wonderful glass chandeliers that hung from the ceiling; and in the
three long windows that opened on the canal, stood groups of statuary.

During the moment that followed their entrance, Clodagh almost believed
that the room was unoccupied, so wide and formal did it look; but a
second glance convinced her of her mistake. At its further end four
persons were playing cards at a small table, partly sheltered from the
rest of the room by a massive leather screen.

When their names were announced, no one at the ta