Enshrined in its coat of dust, that mellow coloured, slender-necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.  Three years to settle down again since the move from Town—­ought to be in prime condition!  Thirty-five years ago he had bought it—­thank God he had kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it.  She would appreciate this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen.  He wiped the bottle, drew the cork with his own hands, put his nose down, inhaled its perfume, and went back to the music room.

Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a lace scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was visible, and the pallor of her neck.  In her grey frock she made a pretty picture for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.

He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went.  The room, which had been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held now but a little round table.  In his present solitude the big dining-table oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed till his son came back.  Here in the company of two really good copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone.  It was the only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather.  He had never been a large eater, like that great chap Swithin, or Sylvanus Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies of past times; and to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him but a sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar.  But this evening was a different matter!  His eyes twinkled at her across the little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland, telling her stories of his travels there, and other experiences which he could no longer recount to his son and grand-daughter because they knew them.  This fresh audience was precious to him; he had never become one of those old men who ramble round and round the fields of reminiscence.  Himself quickly fatigued by the insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others, and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in his relations with a woman.  He would have liked to draw her out, but though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he told her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which constituted half her fascination.  He could not bear women who threw their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-mouthed women who laid down the law and knew more than you did.  There was only one quality in a woman that appealed to him—­charm; and the quieter it was, the more he liked it.  And this one had charm, shadowy as afternoon sunlight on those Italian hills and valleys he had loved.  The feeling, too, that she was, as it were, apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to himself, a strangely desirable companion.  When a man is very old and quite out of the running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of youth, for he would still be first in the heart of beauty.  And he drank his hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young.  But the dog Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish glasses full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.