He carried out instructions to the letter, and was chaffed mildly for deserting the place just as his friends were getting to like him. It was easy to promise a speedy return, if possible; though he felt, somehow, that he would never see Newport again. The conclusion of his horse-dealing transactions took up a good deal of the afternoon, and, to his regret, Dacre was out with a yachting party; so he left a hurriedly written message about his pending departure.
Then he strolled out, went downtown by street car, and met Nancy when she alighted from a rickety cab at the door of Pestalozzi’s café. She wore a cream-tinted dress, and her piquant features were daintily framed in a big Leghorn hat. It pleased him to find that she had not even deigned to veil her face, and her cheerful cry of recognition showed no conscience-stricken sense of guilt because of a meeting which, if known, must have excited the suspicions of her intimates.
“Ah, there you are, Derry!” she said. “Was there ever a more punctual person? Am I late? I had such a load of things to do that I left dressing till the last moment. Is this where we dine? What a jolly little café! It is just like hundreds of such establishments in Rome and Naples. I suppose these Italian restaurateurs employ their fellow-countrymen as builders and decorators; so they carry their architecture and fittings with them.”
“They change their skies, but not their soups,” said Power, falling in with her mood, and the driver of Nancy’s cab recognized the adaptation of Horace’s tag, and was pleased to grin, being himself a broken-down graduate of Harvard.
Ushered to the dining-room, they tackled the hors d’œuvres at once, and Nancy chatted about current events with the tranquil self-possession she would have displayed at Mrs. Van Ralten’s dinner-table. The meal, excellently cooked and deftly served, marched to its end without a word from her as to its particular purpose. She delighted Pestalozzi by taking minute instructions for the preparation of an exquisite spaghetti, and even noted the brands of Italian wines which should be tabled with each course. At half-past eight, when coffee appeared, she rose:
“Pay the bill now, Derry,” she said. “We must be off in five minutes, and I am sure you want to smoke at least one cigarette in peace. Perhaps Signor Pestalozzi will be good enough to order a cab?”
Signor Pestalozzi was charmed, and decidedly puzzled. He believed for many a year that those two had dined at his café for a wager. If any doubter scoffed, he would say, with appropriate gesture:
“Sango la Madonna! I tella you he no squeeze-a de gell, not-ta one time; so, if dey no make-a de bet, what-a for he give ’er dat pranzo superbo?”
Really, from Giovanni’s point of view, there was no answer.
“Tell the man to drive us to the Easton’s Beach end of the Cliff Walk,” she said nonchalantly, when the cab was in evidence, and away they went.