The Gambler Part 57

Clodagh had come forward and seated herself beside her hostess. Now, as she looked about her, she noticed with a feeling of restfulness that the room was pretty and homelike, and that there were flowers on the tables and soft yellow shades on the electric lamps.

"No; I have never been here before. Mr. Barnard gave the address to my--my husband, when we were in Venice; and I came across it among his papers after--after----" She hesitated.

Lady Frances leaned forward sympathetically.

"Poor child!" she murmured. "Don't talk of it! You have had a most trying time. Barny told me all about it only a week ago. But this place is really quite good," she added, in a cheerful voice; "better now than ever. They have just secured the chef from the 'Abbati' Restaurant in Venice. But, of course, you knew 'Abbati's.'"

Her quick glance pa.s.sed over Clodagh's face. Then she rose and moved to the table, as two waiters entered, and dinner was announced.

Clodagh coloured, and crossed the room in her hostess's wake.

"Yes," she said, taking her seat at the table--"yes; I once dined there. It was a wonderfully fascinating place. Has it been a failure?"

Lady Frances shrugged her shoulders.

"Vanished! But tell me about yourself!" She turned to her guest with a change of manner. "You are not seriously contemplating England at this time of year?"

Clodagh smiled calmly.

"Quite seriously."

"But, my dear child, why, if one may be inquisitive?"

"Because I want to know England--to know the English."

Lady Frances's eyes narrowed very slightly; then she gave one of her bright laughs.

"Then come back with me to the Riviera! Any English people worth studying will be found there. Change your plans! Come back with me!"

Clodagh looked up. She was uncertain whether the suggestion had been made in jest or earnest, and the smiling, searching glance of her hostess did not enlighten her. With a slight feeling of embarra.s.sment, she broke off abruptly into another channel of talk.

"And how is Mr. Barnard?" she asked.

"Barny! Oh, optimistic as ever!"

"Then there is one amusing person left in England!"

Lady Frances laughed.

"Only temporarily. He takes his holiday next month. Last March he joined the Luards and me in Naples, and we all went on to Sicily. It was tremendous fun."

She laughed again over some recollection; and entered upon a history of her Sicilian adventures that occupied the rest of dinner.

At the termination of the meal, however, when the waiters had brought in coffee and silently retired, she dropped her reminiscent tone, and, rising from table, moved back to the divan, which was drawn pleasantly near to a bright wood fire.

"Come here, and let's be comfortable!" she said. "I always have a cigarette after dinner. I forget whether you smoke."

Clodagh smiled, as she came slowly forward.

"Not since my cousin and I used to smoke in the top branches of an apple tree in Ireland. I should be afraid to try the experiment again; I might lose an illusion. No other cigarettes could taste like those stolen ones!"

She gave a little sigh, then a little laugh, and seated herself.

Lady Frances looked up from the cigarette she was drawing from her case.

"Illusions!" she said. "Why, life is all illusions at your age!" She paused; then, after a moment's silence, went on again, but in a slower, more considered voice: "You thought I was jesting at dinner, when I asked you to come south with me. But I wasn't. I meant it." She struck a match and lighted her cigarette. "You don't know how you would enjoy Nice. You lost yourself in the delights of roulette at Venice. Think what Monte Carlo would be!"

With a sudden tumultuous confusion, Clodagh flushed.

"I--I have ceased to care about things like that," she said in a hurried voice.

Lady Frances's expression changed to one of deep interest, sharpened by surprise.

"Ceased to care?" she repeated softly. "Since when? And why?"

"Since"--Clodagh hesitated--"oh, since that time in Venice."

Her hostess flicked the ash from her cigarette.

"Some new influence?"

Clodagh was taken unawares.

"I--I have got to know myself better since that time in Venice," she said below her breath. "Some one--something--has made me see that it was not my true self that showed then. I was foolish in those days. I was carried away----"

A very faint smile flitted across Lady Frances's lips.

"That idea belongs to the some one else?" she said in a quiet, cordial tone that invited confidence.

Moved by a sudden impulse, Clodagh leant forward in her seat and clasped her hands. As on the day in Florence--the day when she had written her letter to Laurence a.s.shlin--her soul thirsted for confession. After two long years of silent thought, the temptation to open her heart in speech was overmastering. The room was comfortable, dimly lighted, almost homelike; the hour was propitious; her hostess's voice was extraordinarily kind. She stole one half-shy, half-eager glance at the averted face.

"Lady Frances," she said suddenly, "I was very childish, very foolish, that time in Venice. I knew it even before I--before I left."

With extreme tact, Lady Frances refrained from looking at her. Smoking quietly, she made her next remark in a low, rea.s.suring voice.

"Then that was why you left so suddenly?"

"That was why."

"Walter Gore must have been very eloquent!"

Lady Frances spoke in the same even tone; but, as she felt the thrill of surprise with which Clodagh received her words, she turned quickly and decisively, and met her startled eyes.

"I always knew that Walter Gore went back with you to your hotel on that last night," she said. "I always knew that he read you a very moral lecture."

Clodagh drew a quick breath.

"But how did you know?"