In his fat frenzy, which Lanfear felt to be pathetic, the old gentleman
glanced at him, and then abruptly demanded: "Are you an American?"
We knew each other abroad in some mystical way, and Lanfear did not try
to deny the fact.
"Oh, well, then," the stranger said, as if the fact made everything
right, "will you kindly tell my daughter, on that bench by the door
yonder"--he pointed with a bag, and dropped a roll of rugs from under
his arm--"that I'll be with her as soon as I've looked after the trunks?
Tell her not to move till I come. Heigh! Here! Take hold of these, will
you?" He caught the sleeve of a _facchino_ who came wandering by, and
heaped him with his burdens, and then pushed ahead of the man in the
direction of the baggage-room with a sort of mastery of the situation
which struck Lanfear as springing from desperation rather than
experience.
Lanfear stood a moment hesitating. Then a glance at the girl on the
bench, drooping a little forward in freeing her face from the veil that
hung from her pretty hat, together with a sense of something quaintly
charming in the confidence shown him on such purely compatriotic
grounds, decided him to do just what he had been asked.
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