“It’s drunk a good deal at the clubs nowadays,” he said.

Meanwhile Garratt Skinner had not moved.  He stood looking across the table to his daughter.

“What do you say, Sylvia?  It’s an extravagance.  But I don’t have such luck every day.  It’s in your honor.  Shall we?  Yes, then!”

He did not wait for an answer, but opened the door of a cupboard in the sideboard, and there, quite ready, stood half a dozen bottles of champagne.  A doubt flashed into Sylvia’s mind—­a doubt whether her father’s brilliant idea was really the inspiration which his manner had suggested.  Those bottles looked so obviously got in for the occasion.  But Garratt Skinner turned to her apologetically, as though he divined her thought.

“We don’t run to a wine cellar, Sylvia.  We have to keep what little stock we can afford in here.”

Her doubt vanished, but in an instant it returned again, for as her father came round the table with the bottle in his hand, she noticed that shallow champagne glasses were ready laid at every place.  Garratt Skinner filled the glasses and returned to his place.

“Sylvia,” he said, and, smiling, he drank to her.  He turned to his companions.  “Congratulate me!” Then he sat down.

The champagne thawed the tongues of the company, and as they spoke Sylvia’s heart sank more and more.  For in word and thought and manner her father’s guests were familiar to her.  She refused to acknowledge it, but the knowledge was forced upon her.  She had thought to step out of a world which she hated, against which her delicacy and her purity revolted, and lo! she had stepped out merely to take a stride and step down into it again at another place.

The obsequious attentiveness of Captain Barstow, the vanity of Mr. Parminter and his affected voice, suggesting that he came out of the great world to this little supper party, really without any sense of condescension at all, and the behavior of Walter Hine, who, to give himself courage, gulped down his champagne—­it was all horribly familiar.  Her one consolation was her father.  He sat opposite to her, his strong aquiline face a fine contrast to the faces of the others; he had an ease of manner which they did not possess; he talked with a quietude of his own, and he had a watchful eye and a ready smile for his daughter.  Indeed, it seemed that what she felt his guests felt too.  For they spoke to him with a certain deference, almost as if they spoke to their master.  He alone apparently noticed no unsuitability in his guests.  He sat at his ease, their bosom friend.

Meanwhile, plied with champagne by Archie Parminter, who sat upon the other side of him, “Wallie” Hine began to boast.  Sylvia tried to check him, but he was not now to be stopped.  His very timidity pricked him on to extravagance, and his boasting was that worst form of boasting—­the vaunt of the innocent weakling anxious to figure as a conqueror of women.  With a flushed face he dropped his foolish hints of Mrs. This and Lady That, with an eye upon Sylvia to watch the impression which he made, and a wise air which said “If only I were to tell you all.”