But here, from this bustling Haymarket with its gay, hurrying figures, there breathed new forces, new passions which bewildered him.  As he was looking at the faces in the carriages, the jewels and feathers and shining stuffs, he thought suddenly and sharply of Phoebe sitting alone at her supper in the tiny cottage room.  His heart smote him a little.  But, after all, was he not on her business as well as his own?

The door of Lord Findon’s house opened before them.  At sight of the liveried servants within, Fenwick’s pride asserted itself.  He walked in, head erect, as though the place belonged to him.

Lord Findon came pleasantly to greet them as they entered the drawing-room, and took them up to Lady Findon.  Cuningham she already knew, and she gave a careless glance and a touch of the hand to his companion.  It was her husband’s will to ask these raw, artistic youths to dinner, and she had to put up with it; but really the difficulty of knowing whom to send them in with was enormous.

‘I am glad to make your acquaintance,’ she said, mechanically, to Fenwick, as he stood awkwardly beside her, while her eyes searched the door for a Cabinet Minister and his wife who were the latest guests.

‘Thank you; I too am pleased to make yours,’ said Fenwick, nervously pulling at his gloves, and furious with his own malaise.

Lady Findon’s eyebrows lifted in amusement.  She threw him another glance.

Good-looking!—­but really Findon should wait till they were a little decrotte.

‘I hear your picture is charming,’ she said, distractedly; and then, suddenly perceiving the expected figures, she swept forward to receive them.

’Very sorry, my dear fellow, we have no lady for you; but you will be next my daughter, Madame de Pastourelles,’ said Lord Findon, a few minutes later, in his ear, passing him with a nod and a smile.  His gay, half-fatherly ways with these rising talents were well known.  They made part of his fame with his contemporaries; a picturesque element in his dinner-parties which the world appreciated.

Fenwick found his way rather sulkily to the dining-room.  It annoyed him that Cuningham had a lady and he had none.  His companion on the road downstairs was the private secretary, who tried good-naturedly to point out the family portraits on the staircase wall.  But Fenwick scarcely replied.  He stalked on, his great black eyes glancing restlessly from side to side; and the private secretary thought him a boor.

As he was standing bewildered inside the dining-room a servant caught hold of him and piloted him to his seat.  A lady in white, who was already seated in the next chair, looked up and smiled.

‘My father told me we were to be neighbours.  I must introduce myself.’

She held out a small hand, which, in his sudden pleasure, Fenwick grasped more cordially than was necessary.  She withdrew it smiling, and he sat down, feeling himself an impulsive ass, intimidated by the lights, the flowers, the multitude of his knives and forks, and most of all, perhaps, by this striking and brilliant creature beside him.