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The Admiral handed the spare glass to her, raised his own, and uttering some more barbarous words, drank the contents. Gradka replied in her native tongue, drank her wine and raised the empty glass shoulder high. The Admiral, with a peculiar expression which Mrs. Morland, sitting directly opposite him with her right spectacles on for once, thought unaccountably amused, spoke once more. Gradka shrugged her shoulders, put the glass on the table, said a few words to the Admiral and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

"It's all right," said the Admiral to the gaping party. "The proper thing is to break the glass, and I thought you had rather not. She says I am her grandfather now: but it doesn't mean anything. My smuggler-friend was her uncle."

"I have always said," said Miss Bunting, who according to her own peculiar habit had sat almost silent through dinner, observing and making her own reflections, "that we should thank God for the British Navy."

Everyone except Miss Bunting felt slightly uncomfortable, and when a second loud knock was heard Lady Fielding almost jumped. But it was only a warning that the coffee was there, and Robin fetched the dinner-wagon from outside with the coffee equipage on it and the talk fell into more familiar channels again as Miss Bunting asked Dr. Dale about the next meeting of the Barsetshire Archaeological Society, of which he was a vice-president.