As she said this the ladies were getting up.  So Miss Van Siever also got up, and left Mr Conway Dalrymple to consider whether he could say or could think of himself that he was not a sham in anything.  As regarded Miss Clara Van Siever, he began to think that he could not object to paint her portrait, even though there might be no sugar-plum.  He would certainly do it as Jael; and he would, if he dared, insert dimly in the background some idea of the face of the mother, half-appearing, half-vanishing, as the spirit of the sacrifice.  He was composing the picture, while Mr Dobbs Broughton was arranging himself and his bottles.

‘Musselboro,’ he said, ’I’ll come up between you and Crosbie.  Mr Eames, though I run away from you, the claret shall remain; or, rather, it shall flow backwards and forwards as rapidly as you will.’

‘I’ll keep it moving,’ said Johnny.

’Do; there’s a good fellow.  It’s a nice glass of wine isn’t it?  Old
Ramsby, who keeps as good a stock of stuff as any wine-merchant in
London, gave me a hint, three or four years ago, that he’d a lot of tidy
Bordeaux.  It’s ‘41, you know.  He had ninety dozen, and I took it all.’

‘What was the figure, Broughton?’ said Crosbie, asking the question which he knew was expected.

’Well, I only gave one hundred and four for it then; it’s worth a hundred and twenty now.  I wouldn’t sell a bottle of it for any money.  Come, Dalrymple, pass it round; but fill your glass first.’

‘Thank you, no; I don’t like it.  I’ll drink sherry.’

‘Don’t like it!’ said Dobbs Broughton.

‘It’s strange, isn’t it?  But I don’t.’

‘I thought you particularly told me to drink his claret?’ said Johnny to his friend afterwards.

‘So I did,’ said Conway; ’and wonderfully good wine it is.  But I make it a rule never to eat or drink anything in a man’s house when he praises himself and tells me the price of it.’

‘And I make it a rule never to cut the nose off my own face,’ said Johnny.

Before he went, Johnny Eames had been specially invited to call on Lady Demolines, and had said that he would do so.  ’We live in Porchester Gardens,’ said Miss Demolines.  ’Upon my word, I believe that the farther London stretches in that direction, the farther mamma will go.  She thinks the air so much better.  I know it’s a long way.’

‘Distance is nothing to me,’ said Johnny; ’I can always set off over night.

Conway Dalrymple did not get invited to call on Mrs Van Siever, but before he left the house he did say a word or two more to his friend Mrs Broughton as to Clara Van Siever.  ‘She is a fine young woman,’ he said; ‘she is indeed.’

‘You have found it out, have you?’

’Yes; I have found it out.  I do not doubt that some day she’ll murder her husband or her mother, or startle the world by some newly-invented crime; but that only makes her the more interesting.’