Bertram, leaning on the window-sill, and looking down at the yellow flood of the Arno, again softly chuckled.
“Yes,” he said; “but in this case I'm afraid Real Life has received a little adventitious encouragement.” He turned back into the room, the stiff hotel sitting-room, with its gilt-and-ebony furniture, its maroon-and-orange hangings. “The truth is that I've come to Florence for the especial purpose of seeing you—and of seeking this introduction.”
“Oh?” murmured Ponty, bowing. “So much the better, then,” he approved. “Though I beg to observe,” he added, “that this doesn't elucidate the darker mystery—how you knew that we were here.”
“Ah,” laughed Bertram, “the unsleeping vigilance of the Press. Your movements are watched and chronicled. There was a paragraph in the Anglo-Italian Times. It fell under my eye the day before yesterday, and—well, you see whether I have let the grass grow. My glimpse of the ladies was extremely brief, but it was enough to make me very keen to meet them again. After all, I have a kind of prescriptive right to know Lady Dor—isn't she the sister of one of my oldest friends? Miss Adgate,” he spoke with respectful hesitancy, “I think I have heard, is an American?”
“Of sorts—yes,” Ponty answered. “But without the feathers. Her father was a New Englander, who came to Europe on the death of his wife, when Ruth was three years old, and never went back. So she's entirely a European product.”
His smiling eyes studied for a moment the flowers and clouds and cupids painted in blue and pink upon the ceiling. Then his theme swept him on.
“He was a very remarkable man, her father. I think he had the widest, the most all-round culture of any man I've ever known; he was beyond question the most brilliant talker. And he was wonderful to look at, with a great old head and a splendid tangle of hair and beard. He was a man who could have distinguished himself ten times over, if he would only have done things—written books, or what not.
“But he positively didn't know what ambition meant; he hadn't a trace of vanity, of the desire to shine, in his whole composition. Therefore he did nothing—except absorb knowledge, and delight his friends with his magnificent talk. He made me the executor of his will, and when he died it turned out that he was vastly richer than any one had thought.. Twenty odd years before, he had taken some wild land in Wyoming for a bad debt, and meanwhile the city of Agamenon had been obliging enough to spring up upon it. So, when Ruth attained her majority, I was able to hand over to her a fortune of about thirty thousand a year.”
“Really?” said Bertram, and thought of Mrs. Wilberton. This rhymed somewhat faultily with the story of a money-lender. Then, while Pontycroft, his legs curled up, sat on the maroon-and-orange sofa, and puffed his eternal cigarette, Bertram took a turn or two about the room. He didn't want to ask questions; he didn't want to seem to pry. But he did want to hear just as much about Ruth Adgate as Pontycroft might be inclined to tell. He didn't want to ask questions, and yet, after a minute, as Pontycroft simply smoked in silence, he ended by asking one.
“I think Miss Adgate is of the Old Religion?”