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Updated: May 25, 2025
Neave, by this time, was pretty generally recognized as having the subtlest flair of any collector in Europe, and if he didn't choose to keep the Daunt collection it could be only because he had reason to think he could do better. In a flash this report had gone the rounds and the buyers were on their guard.
Neave felt he was too old for the spring. Spring warm, eager, restless was there, waiting for him in the golden light, ready in front of everybody to run up, to blow in his white beard, to drag sweetly on his arm. And he couldn't meet her, no; he couldn't square up once more and stride off, jaunty as a young man.
Well! that little Venus, who was just a specious seventeenth century attempt at the 'antique, but who had penetrated me with her pleading grace, touched me by the easily guessed story of her obscure, anonymous origin, was more to me imaginatively yes! more than the cold bought beauty of the Daunt Diana..." "The Daunt Diana!" I broke in. "Hold up, Neave the Daunt Diana?" He smiled contemptuously.
It was a mere monastic cell, scarcely large enough for his narrow iron bed and the chest which probably held his few clothes; but there, in a niche of the bare wall, facing the foot of the bed there stood the Daunt Diana. I gasped at the sight and turned to him; and he looked back at me without speaking. "In the name of magic, Neave, how did you do it?"
I found Neave under the leads, in two or three cold rooms that smelt of the cuisine of all his neighbours: a poor shrunken little figure, seedier and shabbier than ever, yet more alive than when we had made the tour of his collection in the Palazzo Neave.
She replaced her arm, and, rather than engage in a childish brawl, Eric left it there, though the touch of her fingers on his wrist set his blood tingling. They walked slowly, for he was trying to set his racing thoughts in order. This, then, was the true Lady Barbara Neave.
There was hardly a poor bit in the lot; and my wonder grew at Neave's madness. All over Europe, dealers began to be fighting for the spoils; and all kinds of stuff were palmed off on the unsuspecting as fragments of the Daunt collection! Meanwhile, what was Neave doing? For a long time I didn't hear, and chance kept me from returning to Rome.
We must have some one posted in the yard of the prison, with instructions to go every ten minutes throughout the night to see if a strip of white cotton has been dropped out. When he finds it he must go at once to William Neave, the governor. He is a sturdy Englishman, and there is no fear of his having been bribed to turn traitor; but it were well to take no one into our confidence.
Agnes thought for a moment and then wrinkled her forehead. "He was never taken by van Laun." "But I've seen one." "Where?" "He gave one to Lady Barbara Neave." Her forehead wrinkled in deeper lines of perplexity. "I didn't know he even knew her. . . . He never mentioned her name; I suppose he thought I should disapprove."
"A professional beauty, my dear fellow expected every head to be turned when she came into a room." "Oh, Neave," I groaned. "Yes, I know. You're thinking of what we felt that day we first saw her in London. Many a poor devil has sold his soul as the result of such a first sight! Well, I sold her instead. Do you want the truth about her? Elle etait bete a pleurer."
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