Madame de Pastourelles was of middle height, slenderly built, with pale-brown hair, and a delicately white face, of a very perfect oval.  She had large, quiet eyes, darker than her hair; features small, yet of a noble outline—­strength in refinement.  The proud cutting of the nose and mouth gave delight; it was a pride so unconscious, so masked in sweetness, that it challenged without wounding.  The short upper lip was sensitive and gay; the eyes ranged in a smiling freedom; the neck and arms were beautiful.  Her dress, according to the Whistlerian phrase just coming into vogue, might have been called an ’arrangement in white.’  The basis of it seemed to be white velvet; and breast and hair were powdered with diamonds delicately set in old flower-like shapes.

‘You are in the same house with Mr. Cuningham?’ she asked, when a dean had said grace and the soup was served.  Her voice was soft and courteous; the irritation in Fenwick felt the soothing of it.

‘I am on the floor above.’

‘He paints charming things.’

Fenwick hesitated.

‘You think so?’ he said, bluntly, turning to look at her.

She coloured slightly and laughed.

‘Do you mean to put me in the Palace of Truth?’

‘Of course I would if I could,’ said Fenwick, also laughing.  ’But I suppose ladies never say quite what they mean.’

’Oh yes, they do.  Well, then, I am not much enamoured of Mr. Cuningham’s pictures.  I like him, and my father likes his painting.’

‘Lord Findon admires that kind of thing?’

’Besides a good many other kinds.  Oh! my father has a dreadfully catholic taste.  He tells me you haven’t been abroad yet?’

Fenwick acknowledged it.

’Ah, well; of course you’ll go.  All artists do—­except’—­she dropped her voice—­’the gentleman opposite.’

Fenwick looked, and beheld a personage scarcely, indeed, to be seen at all for his very bushy hair, whiskers, and moustache, from which emerged merely the tip of a nose and a pair of round eyes in spectacles.  As, however, the hair was of an orange colour and the eyes of a piercing and pinlike sharpness, the eclipse of feature was not a loss of effect.  And as the flamboyant head was a tolerably familiar object in the shop-windows of the photographers and in the illustrated papers, Fenwick recognised almost immediately one of the most popular artists of the day—­Mr. Herbert Sherratt.

Fenwick flushed hotly.

‘Lord Findon doesn’t admire his work?’ he said, almost with fierceness, turning to his companion.

‘He hates his pictures and collects his drawings.’

‘Drawings!’ Fenwick shrugged his shoulders.  ’Anybody can make a clever drawing.  It’s putting on the paint that counts.  Why doesn’t he go abroad?’

’Oh, well, he does go to Holland.  But he thinks Italian painting all stuff, and that so many Madonnas and saints encourage superstition.  But what’s the use of talking?  They have to station a policeman beside his picture in the Academy to keep off the crowd.  Hush-sh!  He is looking this way.’