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.