Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/35

 hither and yon across the face of Italy. She was the smart, the almost notorious, d'Orobelli.

"And Father d'Astier," murmured Mrs. Weatherby with a pleased and gracious nod in the direction of the silver-haired gentleman. Father d'Astier bowed, a tall, handsome man with intense black eyes, a fine nose and a splendid rather sensual mouth, a figure at sixty possessed of great vigor and distinction. Winnery knew of him, too, a priest without any parish save all of God's world, who lunched and dined "everywhere." He had a simple mission in life: it was to convert the rich who married impoverished titles and to help on their way to grace any others of considerable wealth who felt a leaning toward Rome. He was a confessor to many fashionable and scandalous ladies, to great bankers and members of decayed royal families. Old stories of Father d'Astier and "the d'Orobelli" (as Winnery thought of her), heard at secondhand through years, rolled through the back of his mind. For an instant it gave him a pleasant, warm sense of moving in the great world.

"And Miss Fosdick," concluded Mrs. Weatherby with a slight and careless gesture as if she were tossing a piece of dirt over her shoulder. The gesture indicated the plump, shy little woman dressed in black who stood in the background with a touching air of timidity. This, of course, was Mrs. Weatherby's companion, the deaf-mute. Out of the corner of his eye, Winnery saw how she hovered in the background, almost tremulously, obscured by that figure all in white which seemed at once so vaporous and so solid. Miss Fosdick was like