“Who—Annina? As pretty a little Venetian as ever paid you a smile for a compliment. I was playing for high stakes, I’ll admit, old man. But then I knew what I was about—the countess was no fool.”
Again Lamont lapsed into sotto voce.
“Besides,” he declared (again within ear-shot of Enoch), “they manage these little affairs better in Italy than in America. To love is an art there. Very well, they have brought it to a finesse. I’d give ten years of my life to be back there again—Ah! but we were happy! Once I wired her all the way from Verona.”
Again the conversation became inaudible to Enoch.
“And she came?” asked Seth, his voice rising, with a sneaking thought in his mind that he would like to have known her.
“Of course she did; she even brought Annina. There are some women who never can travel without a maid; the Countess Vezzitti was one. She arrived in deep mourning without a jewel. Delicious, wasn’t it? As she whispered to me: ‘You see, amico mio, I have only brought one jewel—Annina.’ I believe that girl would have given her life for her mistress.”
He lowered the candle under its crimson shade between them, and kindled a Russian cigarette over its flame, lighting up his dark, handsome, devil-may-care face and a cabochon emerald ring the countess had given him. Lamont might easily have been mistaken for an Italian. His slim, straight figure, over six feet in height, moved with an easy Latin grace; a dark-skinned, handsome fellow, with the eyes of a Neapolitan, fine hands, a soft persuasion in his voice, and a smile that revealed his perfect teeth, white as milk. At thirty he was all some women could have desired. He was now forty-three.
“Never run after a woman,” Lamont resumed quietly. “Take the advice of an old hand, Van Worden, let them run after you; grande dame or bourgeoise, they are all alike.”
Then they fell into a talk about the theatres, in which Seth gave vent to some heavy opinions about the revival of the “School for Scandal,” at Wallack’s, expatiating upon the art and beauty of Miss Annie Robe, and the consummate acting of John Gilbert as Sir Peter Teazle, which he considered a capital performance.
In lighter vein, he talked over the good old theatre days of the past—Harrigan and Hart in their old theatre, the little Comique, playing the “Mulligan Guards Ball,” the drop-curtain with a picture of the Mary Powell at full speed up the Hudson, and a strong smell of chloride of lime permeating the house from gallery to pit. Thus he preambled reminiscently up the Broadway of his younger days. Where was Niblo’s Garden and the “Black Crook”? “Gone,” declared Seth. “Evangeline” and “Babes in the Woods” at the old 14th Street Theatre had vanished likewise, and the San Francisco Minstrels, packed on Saturday afternoons with Wall Street brokers, roaring over the personal jokes, those never-to-be-forgotten end-men, Billy Birch and Charley Backus, had prepared for them overnight.