The Daunt Diana

I

"WHAT'S become of the Daunt Diana? You mean to say you never heard
the sequel?"

Ringham Finney threw himself back into his chair with the smile of
the collector who has a good thing to show. He knew he had a good
listener, at any rate. I don't think much of Ringham's snuff-boxes,
but his anecdotes are usually worth while. He's a psychologist
astray among _bibelots_, and the best bits he brings back from his
raids on Christie's and the Hotel Drouot are the fragments of human
nature he picks up on those historic battle-fields. If his _flair_
in enamel had been half as good we should have heard of the Finney
collection by this time.

He really has--queer fatuous investigator!--an unusually sensitive
touch for the human texture, and the specimens he gathers into his
museum of heterogeneous memories have almost always some mark of the
rare and chosen. I felt, therefore, that I was really to be
congratulated on the fact that I didn't know what had become of the
Daunt Diana, and on having before me a long evening in which to
learn. I had just led my friend back, after an excellent dinner at
Foyot's, to the shabby pleasant sitting-room of my _rive-gauche_
hotel; and I knew that, once I had settled him in a good arm-chair,
and put a box of cigars at his elbow, I could trust him not to budge
till I had the story.

II

YOU remember old Neave, of course? Little Humphrey Neave, I mean. We
used to see him pottering about Rome years ago. He lived in two tiny
rooms over a wine shop, on polenta and lentils, and prowled among
the refuse of the Ripetta whenever he had a few _soldi_ to spend.
But you've been out of the collector's world for so long that you
may not know what happened to him afterward...

He was always a queer chap, Neave; years older than you and me, of
course--and even when I first knew him, in my raw Roman days, he
gave me an extraordinary sense of age and experience. I don't think
I've ever known any one who was at once so intelligent and so
simple. It's the precise combination that results in romance; and
poor little Neave was romantic.

He told me once how he'd come to Rome. He was _originaire_ of
Mystic, Connecticut--and he wanted to get as far away from it as
possible. Rome seemed as far as anything on the same planet could
be; and after he'd worried his way through Harvard--with shifts and
shavings that you and I can't imagine--he contrived to get sent to
Switzerland as tutor to a chap who'd failed in his examinations.
With only the Alps between, he wasn't likely to turn back; and he
got another fellow to take his pupil home, and struck out on foot
for the seven hills.

I'm telling you these early details merely to give you a