ng. His gaze dropped from the picture to Clodagh,
sitting below it. Above the dark riding habit and above the satin coat,
it seemed that the same olive skin, the same level eyebrows and clear
hazel eyes confronted him.

"I see!" he said quietly. "I see! A very peculiar case of family
likeness."

He spoke affably, casually, in all innocence; but scarcely had the
words left his lips than he precipitately wished them back. With a loud
laugh, Asshlin struck the table with his hand.

"Ah, good!" he exclaimed. "Good! Now, Clo, what have you got to say?"

But with a gesture quite as vehement as his own, the girl raised her
head.

"I say that it's not true," she said. "It isn't true. I'm not like
him."

She glanced from her father to Milbanke with suddenly kindling eyes.

"I'm not like him!" she repeated. "I won't be like him!"

Asshlin leant back quickly in his chair. He was still laughing, but a
shade of temper was audible in the laugh.

"Do you hear that, James?" he said. "We of the present generation are
altogether too good for the past. A slip of a girl nowadays thinks
herself vastly superior to a great-great-grandfather who was the finest
horseman and the most open-handed man in Munster. That's the attitude
of to-day."

He moved aside, as Burke re-entered the room and laid a decanter of
port and two glasses on the shining mahogany table.

"My great-grandfather, Anthony Asshlin," he went on deliberately, "was
as fine a specimen of the Irish gentleman as ever lived--I don't care
who denies it. Have a glass of port, James? An appreciation of good
wine was the one thing he left his descendants."

There was an awkward silence while he filled the two glasses and pushed
one towards his guest.

But Milbanke's ease of mind had already been upset. He held no key to
the disconcerting situation; and it puzzled and perplexed him, as his
first impression of his old friend had done. Both possessed elements
that he vaguely knew to be hidden from his sight--out of focus from his
present point of view. For a space he sat warily fingering his glass,
but making no attempt to drink. Without openly seeming to observe it,
he was conscious of Asshlin's half-humorous, half-aggressive mood; of
the nervous attitude of the younger girl, and of Clodagh's flushed
face.

To a newly arrived guest, the position was strained. With growing
embarrassment he glanced from the rich, dark wine in his glass to its
reflection in the polished su