Clodagh's mood was inexplicable even to herself as she entered the hotel, ran upstairs to her own room, and began to dress for dinner. She changed her dress with an almost feverish haste, giving herself no time for thought; and then, scarcely waiting to take a final look into the mirror, left the room and hurried down into the hall. There she encountered Barnard. "I have just been speaking to your husband," he said, greeting her with a smile. "He has been lured into attending some secret conclave of Italian scientists. He asked me to make his excuses to you." Clodagh's glance fell. "Oh!" she said with a curious little inflection of the voice. "Of course he knew that you were going out to-night?" "Oh yes! Of course!" She still kept her lashes lowered. Barnard smiled. "Mrs. Milbanke," he exclaimed in a cheerful voice, "suppose we have a gay evening! Lord Deerehurst has asked me to dine with him and Serracauld at the 'Abbati.' Let's form an even party! The old man will be absolutely charmed; and you have never dined at a restaurant. Say I may arrange it!" For a moment longer Clodagh studied the ground; then very quickly she raised her eyes, and in their depths Barnard read a new expression. "After all," she said tentatively, "why shouldn't we take what comes our way?" He extended his hands. "Why, indeed? Let me spread the good news?" Again she let her lashes droop. "Very well!" she said--"very well! Say that I want to enjoy myself." The dignified and placid serenity of Venice had been intruded upon that season by the establishment of a fashionable dining-place, which, under the name of the Abbati Restaurant, had taken up its position in a beautiful old house on one of the narrower waterways. Its distance from Clodagh's hotel was short; and the journey thither--taken in Lord Deerehurst's gondola, in company with the old peer, Serracauld, and Barnard--occupied but a few minutes. Clodagh's first impression, on gliding up the still, dark waterway and stepping out upon the time-worn garden steps, was one of delight. And as she stood for a moment in the shadow of the ancient wall, above which the tree-tops rose, casting black reflections into the water that ran beneath them, she was conscious of the subtle touch of the warm night wind upon her face; of the subtle poetry in the scent of unseen flowers; of the subtle invitation conveyed by the long row of lighted windows, seen through a screen of magnolias. She had momentarily forgotten her companions, when Deerehurst--the last to leave the gondola--stepped softly to her side. "This appeals to you?" he said. She started slightly at his unexpected nearness; then, with a quick impetuosity, she responded to his question. "I think it is exquisite," she said. "The light through the trees suggests such wonderful, mysterious things." He smiled under cover of the darkness. "It suggests an enchanted banquet. Let us find the presiding genius!"