moreover a rather strange spark of excitement in his eyes, the portiere pocketed the tip, looked with respect at Neale's powerful proportions, and went discreetly back to his own affairs.
When she came out at six Neale was struck speechless. He had spent the entire hour thinking how she looked, remembering every detail of her beauty. And yet it was as though he saw for the first time that noble carriage of her head and shoulders, that heart-taking curve of her long fine brows, the smooth pale oval of her face, the touching wistfulness, the seeking look in her dark eyes. That was before she saw him. When he came up to her she broke at once into a laugh, her face sparkling and merry, a delicate malice in the mobile lines of her red lips.
"Oh, Mr. Crittenden, I've been wanting to see you! To share a joke with you! Such a joke! That invitation to tea, you know. You see, you were really the one Signor Ambrogi wants to see, you were the only one Donna Antonia spoke of. But I knew it would hurt Mr. Livingstone so, if he were left out. I made her understand that. So she said, 'Oh, well, if you insist, he can come too.' It's rather—don't you think, it is?—rather a joke?" She began to laugh again. "Don't you see it, the scene when he walks in alone—the good Livingstone in his best clothes,so happy and so important, with his best brand of European conversation in the show-window—a comparison most likely of Caravaggio's theory of treating wall spaces with Correggio's. And what Ambrogi wants to discuss is American railroad terminal facilities! Ambrogi is a man of the people. He's made his own way up from the bottom. He has probably never heard of Correggio in his life. And doesn't see why he should," she finished with a peal of laughter.
Neale laughed, but he did not find it as comic as she. "I'd no idea of all that," he said uncomfortably. "Perhaps I ought to have gone. It rather looks like putting poor old Livingstone in a hole."
"Oh, no; oh, no," she reassured him. "They'll be good to him. They may look at each other once or twice. But nothing
