With the spur of the old fascination and the goad of the new-born misgiving, he glanced again and yet again from his host's hard, handsome features to the pictures, from the pictures to the warm-coloured faces of the children. The study was absorbing. It supplied him with an agreeable undercurrent of interest while the ham and turkey were removed, and Asshlin, with much dexterity, distributed portions of an immense apple-pie, deluged in cream; it still occupied his mind when--cheese having been placed upon the table and partaken of--Burke proceeded to remove the cloth. At the moment that the polished surface of the table was laid bare, his glance, temporarily distracted from its study of the nearer pictures, was attracted and arrested by one portrait, that hung in partial shadow above the carved chimneypiece. It was the picture of a tall, slight boy of sixteen or seventeen years, dressed in the black satin knee breeches, the diamond shoe buckles, and powdered queue of a past generation. Something in the pose of this painted figure, something in the youthful face, caught and held his attention. In unconscious scrutiny, he leant forward to study the shadowed features; then Asshlin, suddenly aware of his interest, leant across the table. "That was what I meant, James, by saying one of them should have been a boy," he said sharply. "Haven't I justification?" He nodded half earnestly, half in malicious humour towards the picture above the fire. For a moment Milbanke was at a loss; then all at once he comprehended his host's meaning. 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.