The first time I saw Frascatoni--when he and Armitage strolled into the reading room of the Federal Club together--I thought him about the handsomest and, in a certain way, the most distinguished-looking man I had ever seen. He was a black Italian--dark olive skin, coal-black hair, dark-gray eyes that seemed black or brown at a glance. They were weary-looking eyes; they gazed at you with the ineffable dreamy satiric repose of a sphinx who has seen the futile human procession march into the grave for countless centuries. He had a slow sweet smile, a manner made superior by the effacement of every trace of superiority. He had the quiet, leisurely voice of one used to being listened to attentively. “Loring--the Prince Frascatoni. Prince, I particularly wish you to know my friend Godfrey Loring. Don’t be deceived by his look of the honest simple youth into thinking him either young or unsophisticated.” The prince gave me his hand. As it had also been my habit ever since I learned the valuable trick merely to give my hand, the gesture was a draw. Neither had trapped the other into making an advance. We talked commonplaces of New York sky line, American energy and business enthusiasm for perhaps half an hour. Then we three and some one else, a professional cultivator of millionaires named Chassory, I believe, played bridge and afterwards dined together. It came out sometime during the evening that Frascatoni had met my wife in Rome and in Paris, and that he knew my son-in-law--not surprising, as the fashionable set is international, and is small enough to be acquainted all round. Armitage must have told him that my wife and I were not altogether inconsolable if we did not see too much of each other. For, the prince, taking Edna in to dinner a few nights later, laid siege at once. I recall noting how he would talk to her in his quiet, leisurely way until she looked at him; then, how his weary eyes would suddenly light up with interest--not with ardor--nothing so banal as that--but a fleeting gleam of interest that was more flattering than the ardor of another man would have been. As Frascatoni, an unusual type, attracted me, I saved myself from boredom by observing him all evening. And it was highly instructive in the art of winning--whether women or men--to see how he led her on to try to make that fascinating fugitive gleam reappear in his eyes. I afterwards discovered that he accompanied the gleam with a peculiar veiled caress of inflection in his calm, even voice--a trick that doubly reënforced the flattery of the gleam. “What a charming man Prince Frascatoni is,” said my wife, when our guests were gone. “Very,” said I. “If I were writing a novel I’d make him the hero--or the villain.” “He is one of the greatest nobles in Europe.” “He looks it and acts it,” said I. “Why, I thought him very simple and natural,” protested she.