“What did that mean?” he mused.  “I guess it was because I said the crews rowed in short sleeves.”

Farnham also saw the blush, in the midst of a disquisition which Miss Dallas was delivering upon a new poem of Francois Coppee.  He saw the clear, warm color rise and subside like the throbbing of an auroral light in a starry night.  He thought he had never seen anything so lovely, but he wondered “what that oaf could have said to make her blush like that.  Can it be possible that he——­” His brow knitted with anger and contempt.

“Mais, qu’est-ce que vous avez donc?” asked Euphrasia.

Farnham was saved from the necessity of an explanation by Mr. Temple, who came up at that moment, and, laying a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, said: 

“Now we will go into my den and have a glass of that sherry.  I know no less temptation than Tio Pepe could take you away from Miss Dallas.”

“Thank you awfully,” said the young lady.  “Why should you not give Miss Dallas herself an opportunity to decline the Tio Pepe?”

“Miss Dallas shall have some champagne in a few minutes, which she will like very much better.  Age and wickedness are required to appreciate sherry.”

“Ah!  I congratulate your sherry; it is about to be appreciated,” said the deserted beauty, tartly, as the men moved away.

They entered the little room which Temple called his den, which was a litter of letter-books, stock-lists, and the advertising pamphlets of wine-merchants.  The walls were covered with the portraits of trotting horses; a smell of perpetual tobacco was in the air.  Temple unlocked a cupboard, and took out a decanter and some glasses.  He filled two, and gave one to Arthur, and held the other under his nose.

“Farnham,” he said, with profound solemnity, “if you don’t call that the”—­(I decline to follow him in the pyrotechnical combination of oaths with which he introduced the next words)—­“best sherry you ever saw, then I’m a converted pacer with the ringbone.”

Arthur drank his wine, and did not hesitate to admit all that its owner had claimed for it.  He had often wondered how such a man as Temple had acquired such an unerring taste.

“Temple,” he said, “how did you ever pick up this wine; and, if you will excuse the question, how did you know it when you got it?”

Temple smiled, evidently pleased with the question.  “You’ve been in Spain, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” said Farnham.

“You know this is the genuine stuff, then?”

“No doubt of it.”

“How do you know?”

“The usual way—­by seeing and drinking it at the tables of men who know what they are about.”

“Well, I have never been out of the United States, and yet I have learned about wine in just the same way.  I commenced in New Orleans among the old Spanish and French Creoles, and have kept it up since, here and there.  I can see in five minutes whether a man knows anything about his wine.  If he does, I remember every word he says—­that is my strong point—­head and tongue.  I can’t remember sermons and speeches, but I can remember every syllable that Sam Ward said one night at your grandfather’s ten years ago; and if I have once tasted a good wine, I never forget its fashion of taking hold.”