At the moment when the gondolas passed, at the moment when Barnard laughingly explained the stranger's identity, the name of Walter Gore took on a new significance, became a personal element in touch with her own existence. In studying the effect of this incident upon her actions, it must be borne in mind that Clodagh's moral position was strangely incongruous--a position to which not one amongst her new acquaintances possessed a key. She was a married woman with the vitality, the curiosity, the sense of adventure of a girl in her first season. She was like a plant that, having been shut for long in dark places, is suddenly exposed to the influences of warmth and light. She glowed, she blossomed, she expanded under every passing touch. As she leant back against the cushions of the gondola and met the amused and quizzical glance that accompanied Barnard's explanation, her thoughts sprang forward under a certain stimulus of excitement; her blood--the blood of a reckless, adventurous race--leaped suddenly in response to a new idea. She looked up at her companion, her face glowing, her hands clasped lightly in her lap. "Mr. Barnard," she said, "will Sir Walter Gore be at the Palazzo Ugochini to-night?" Barnard met her glance. For a moment he studied her whimsically, then he responded by putting a question of his own. "Mrs. Milbanke," he asked, "is it true that when you dare an Irishwoman to do a certain thing, that thing is as good as done?" Clodagh's lashes fluttered, and she coloured hotly; then with the naive defiance, the intoxication of youthful assurance, she lifted her eyes again and gave another bright, clear laugh. "Two unanswered questions should be as good as one reply!" she said, looking straight into his face. All that day Clodagh went about her concerns with a delightful, furtive sense of things to come. In the evening she came down to dinner arrayed in a dress of lace and embroidery that had come from Vienna only three weeks before. The dress possessed sweeping lines that defined her slight figure; and above the jewelled lace of the bodice her graceful shoulders, smooth as ivory, and as warm in tone, showed bare of any ornament. The faint olive of her skin was enriched by the neutral colour of her dress, and in the bright light of the hotel rooms, the underlying gleam of gold was distinctly visible in her brown hair. Her whole appearance as she entered the dining-room was subtly attractive; and in every detail of her expression pleasure and anticipation gleamed like tangible things. From the colour that wavered in her cheeks to the dilated pupils that turned her eyes from hazel to black, she was the embodiment of eager expectation. Neither Deerehurst, Serracauld, nor Barnard dined at the hotel that night, but from the eyes of more than one stranger she read the assurance that she had not arrayed herself in vain; and youthfully conscious of a subtle, impersonal success, her eager spirits rose high.