"I was sad when I found I had so narrowly missed you at Seattle, and again at Chicago. You travel far too rapidly for one of my age!"
His age might have been thirty. He was a suave, polished, sophisticated person. Nothing was more natural than that he should pause in his travels to call upon two agreeable women he had met on a Pacific steamer. Possibly he was in love with Alice Bashford; this was not a difficult state of heart and mind for a man to argue himself into. She was even more strikingly beautiful to-night than I had thought her before. She was again in white—it was only in daytime that she wore black—and white was exceedingly becoming to her. As we talked she plied listlessly a fan—a handsome trinket of ostrich plumes. A pretty woman and a fan are the happiest possible combination. There is no severer test of grace than a woman's manner of using a fan. A clumsy woman makes an implement of this plaything, flourishing it to emphasize her talk, or, what is worse, pointing with it like an instructor before a blackboard. But in graceful hands it is unobtrusive, a mere bit of decoration that teases and fascinates the beholder's eye.
With all his poise and equanimity I was distinctly conscious that Montani's dark eyes were intent upon the idly swaying fan. I thought at first it was her hands that interested him as they unfailingly interested me, but when, from time to time, she put down the fan his gaze still followed it. And yet there was nothing novel in the delicate combination of ivory and feathers. I had seen many fans that to all appearances were just like it. Once, as she picked it up and lazily opened it, I saw him bend forward eagerly, then, finding that I had noted his eagerness, he rose, pretending that a brass screen before the fireplace had caught his eye and asked whether it was not a Florentine production, which shook my faith in his connoisseurship, as I had bought the thing myself from a New York brassworker who had made it to my order.
Montani spoke of the porcelains. "Oh, to be sure! They don't show to best advantage in electric light, do they? But I can have a few of the prize pieces taken into the dining-room," said Alice.
Mrs. Farnsworth had excused herself to finish a letter, and from my chair I could see her head bent over the big desk in the library. Alice rang for Antoine, and I followed her into the hall to offer my aid.
"Oh, don't trouble," she said. "Antoine can do anything necessary. Yes; thanks; if you will turn on the dining-room lights."
I was gone hardly half a minute. When I reached the drawing-room door Montani had crossed the room to the table on which Alice had dropped the fan and was examining it closely. He faced the door, and the moment he detected me exclaimed carelessly: "An exquisite little bauble! I am always curious as to the source of such trifles. I was looking for the maker's imprimatur. I know a Parisian who is the leading manufacturer of the world. But it is not his, I see."
As we stood talking of other things he plied the fan carelessly as though for the pleasure of the faint scent it exhaled, and when Alice called us he put it down carefully where he had found it.
He really did seem to know something about ceramics and praised, with lively enthusiasm, the pieces that had been set out on the table. One piece, as to whose authenticity my uncle had entertained serious doubts, Montani unhesitatingly pronounced genuine and stated very plausible reasons for his opinion.
On the whole, he was an interesting fellow. When he had finished his inspections he lingered for only a few minutes and took his leave, saying that he was spending the night at an inn near Stamford.