"It is most important," he murmured to Crane, "to give these people the idea from the start that you cannot be deceived or imposed upon." But Crane refused even to consider such questions until he had had a bath and dinner.
The plan of the old house was very simple. On the right of the front door was the drawing-room, on the left a small library and a room which had evidently been used as an office. The stairs went up in the center, shallow and broad, winding about a square well. The dining-room ran across the back of the house.
When Tucker came down dressed for dinner, he found Crane was ahead of him. He was standing in the drawing-room bending so intently over something on a table that Tucker, who was not entirely without curiosity, came and bent over it, too, and even the butler, who had come to announce dinner, craned his neck in that direction.
It was a miniature, set in an old-fashioned frame of gold and pearls. It represented a young woman in a mauve tulle ball dress, full in the skirt and cut off the shoulders, as was the fashion in the days before the war. She wore a wreath of fuchsias, one of which trailing down just touched her bare shoulder.
"Well," said Tucker contemptuously, "you don't consider that a work of art, do you?"
Burton remained as one entranced.
"It reminds me of some one I know," he answered.
"It is quite obviously a fancy picture," replied Tucker, who was something of a connoisseur. "Look at those upturned eyes, and that hand. Did you ever see a live woman with such a tiny hand?"
"Yes, once," said Crane, but his guest did not notice him.
"The sentimentality of the art of that period," Tucker continued, "which is so plainly manifested in the poetry——"