Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/41

 mechanical smile which is a strange mixture of condescension, absent-mindedness and a desire to be polite—a smile which is one of the marks of persons frequenting smart society. Thirty years of this practice had fixed hard lines on the face of the Princess. He asked himself suddenly why that strange pair had stayed to tea when they might easily have sped back to Brinoë in the black and red motor. Indeed, he could not see why they were there at all.

Mrs. Weatherby, who had now struck an attitude in the awkward Renaissance chair, continued her discussion of the history of the place. It went back, she said, to Roman times at least. The very statue they had just discovered proved as much. Then certainly it had once been occupied by Leonardo da Vinci, who, it was said, had used the cowshed for his famous experiments in flying, and after that it had been the property of the Spanish Ambassador at Brinoë, who used it as a summer residence and added the baroque façade with its agitated statues. Mrs. Weatherby ornamented the account with many minute and boring details, most of them completely inaccurate, since Mrs. Weatherby possessed but the sketchiest ideas of Italian history. Each inaccuracy caused Winnery to wince and struggle with a desire to set her right, for he was one who cared profoundly for detail. He would have spoken, but that instinct told him his effort was certain to make no impression and would only delay the story of Miss Annie Spragg. A woman accustomed to making over religions would not be awed by history. Besides, as in the case of the furniture, it was the effect she sought rather than the accuracy of detail. 