"Dear Derry, I shall be there at seven-thirty. Meanwhile, go to the Casino, and tell everybody that you are summoned to New York on business, and mean to leave either tonight by the Fall River steamer or by first train tomorrow. You are traveling by the train to oblige me; so I am not asking you to indulge in polite fiction.
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'oeuvres_ 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: