ertainly," I assented, pleased that she had taken me into her
confidence and deeply curious as to the Italian connoisseur. What she
had told so frankly and plausibly did not, however, touch upon the
matter of the interest shown by the American State Department in my
aunt's arrival at Barton, which troubled me much more than the antics of
the Italian who had followed the women across the Pacific.

Count Montani arrived shortly and was received in the drawing-room. The
ladies greeted him with the greatest cordiality. As he crossed the room
I verified the limp and other points of Antoine's description. His
bearing was that of a gentleman; and in his very correct evening dress
he hardly looked like a man who would disguise himself and attempt to
rob a house. He spoke English all but perfectly and proceeded at once to
talk a great deal.

"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 p