"Good evening, Count Torriani," said a melting feminine voice at his elbow. He stopped and turned to confront Mrs. Porter Palmer, who seemed gushingly delighted to see him. He bowed and saw that, accompanying Mrs. Palmer, was a young woman of such striking appearance as to arrest his eye at once and hold it. Jet black hair caught tight to the head set off the waxen pallor of her face. Her dark eyes were slightly almond-shaped and singularly bright. She was dressed in a shimmering black satin evening gown that displayed the graceful lines of her slim, svelte body and the creamy whiteness of her shoulders. She was American, but not in appearance. In Paris and Monte Carlo, Rodrigo had met beauties like this, but never in America. She looked exactly like the type of woman who, in the old days, had been irresistible to him. But that first swift impression, he told himself, was nonsense. She was probably the soul of modesty.
"I want you to meet my niece, Elise Van Zile," said Mrs. Palmer.
He bent and kissed the glamorous lady's hand and was aware of her languid eyes upon him. A moment later, he was introduced to Mr. Porter Palmer, the twittering bald-headed little man who had been disposing of his ladies' wraps.
"Elise has just come on from San Francisco for a few weeks, and we are showing her the sights," explained Mrs. Palmer, and then to her husband. "It seems terribly crowded and noisy in there, Edward. Do you think it's quite respectable?" Mr. Palmer waved his hands in the air, deprecating his wife's fastidiousness. She turned to Rodrigo, "Won't you join us at our table, Count Torriani?"
"Thanks, really, but the lady I am with and I are just leaving," he made haste to reply, immediately afterward wondering why he had invented this falsehood. He glanced at the coolly beautiful Miss Van Zile, on whom his refusal had apparently made no impression. Was he foolish in sensing, at his very first glimpse of this girl from the West, something that warned him?
"But you will come to the tea I am giving for Elise next Saturday afternoon at the Plaza, will you not, Count Torriani?" Mrs Palmer insisted.
He hesitated, then accepted. He again kissed the hand of Elise Van Zile, and he raised his eyes to find her looking enigmatically at him. Somehow he was reminded of the Mona Lisa, in whose dark eyes are painted all the wisdom and intrigues of the world.
Rodrigo returned to a petulant Sophie. Both her white elbows were on the table, and she was impatiently fingering the blazing diamond pendant at her throat. It was a magnificent bauble, set in clusters of sapphires and platinum. Her position revealed also her gorgeous diamond bracelets and the large dazzling assortment of rings upon her fingers. Sophie was an assiduous collector of jewelry, and, in the absence of something more interesting to do, she was offering an exhibition of her arsenal to the crowd about her.
"Where have you been, Rodrigo?" she fretted as he sat down. "At least you might have come back as soon as you made Betty leave me. I have felt a perfect fool—sitting here alone, with everybody in the place staring at me."
He apologized profusely. She was right. People were staring at her. He stared back so intently at the two young men with too-slicked hair and ill-fitting evening clothes who had taken the table vacated by Bill Terhune's antagonist, that they dropped their bold eyes.