Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/411

 them, while they went through a leave-taking which seemed to him very formal and long-drawn-out; and when the old man went in and the infernal gate actually shut behind him, Neale started forward with a bound.

But he reflected at once that it was too absurd to meet her here, in a quarter of Rome where no business of his could possibly have brought him at that hour. The cautious, adroit thing to do was to walk along behind her at a distance, till she had turned into a thoroughfare with shops, where he might conceivably be strolling. While he was making this sagacious plan, his feet bore him rapidly up beside her, where he took off his hat and said, "Good morning, Miss Allen," with a wide smile of satisfaction which he knew must look nothing less than imbecile.

Well, he had done what he had set out to do.

She gave him a "good morning, Mr. Crittenden," that showed no surprise, and with great tact began the talk on the only basis which gave him a reasonable claim on her time. "You want to hear how somebody in Rome knows about your great-uncle Burton, don't you? I'm afraid it's like so many other things that sound mysterious and interesting. It will only be quite flat and commonplace when you really know. It is no more than this. When I was a little girl in America, and then later when I was in college for a couple of years, I was sent to spend my summers in Ashley, visiting an old cousin of my father's." She looked at him from under her broad-brimmed blue hat, with a mock-regretful air, one eyebrow raised whimsically, and made a little apologetic gesture with her shoulders. "That's all," she said, smiling and shaking her head.

"Oh, no, it's not all!" Neale cried to himself with intense conviction.

Aloud he said, "But I want to hear more about what kind of a place it is. You see, to tell the truth, I'd forgotten that I had any Great-uncle Burton. And I never was in Ashley, Think of being in Florence and getting a letter saying that a saw mill in Vermont has suddenly become yours!"

"I should call it a most nice sort of surprise," remarked the girl with a quaintly un-English turn of phrase which he had