She turned her head, and Fenwick feared she was lost to him.  He managed to get in another question.  ’Are there any other painters here?’

She pointed out the president of the Academy, a sculptor, and an art-critic, at whose name Fenwick curled his lip, full of the natural animosity of the painter to the writer.

‘And, of course, you know my neighbour?’

Fenwick looked hastily, and saw a very handsome youth bending forward to answer a question which Lord Findon had addressed to him from across the table; a face in the ’grand style’—­almost the face of a Greek—­pure in outline, bronzed by foreign suns, and lit by eyes expressing so strong a force of personality that, but for the sweetness with which it was tempered, the spectator might have been rather repelled than won.  When the young man answered Lord Findon, the voice was, like the face, charged—­perhaps over-charged—­with meaning and sensibility.

‘I took Madame de Pastourelles to see it to-day,’ the youth was saying.  ‘She thought it as glorious as I did.’

‘Oh! you are a pair of enthusiasts,’ said Lord Findon.  ’I keep my head.’

The ‘it’ turned out to be a Titian portrait from the collection of an old Roman family, lately brought to London and under offer to the National Gallery, of which Lord Findon was a trustee.

Madame de Pastourelles looked towards her father, confirming what the unknown youth had said.  Her eyes had kindled.  She began to talk rapidly in defence of her opinion.  Between her, Lord Findon, and her neighbour there arose a conversation which made Fenwick’s ears tingle.  How many things and persons and places it touched upon that were wholly unknown to him!  Pictures in foreign museums—­Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg—­the names of French or German experts—­quotations from Italian books or newspapers—­the three dealt lightly and familiarly with a world in which Fenwick had scarcely a single landmark.  How clever she was! how charming!  What knowledge without a touch of pedantry!  And how the handsome youth kept up with her—­nay, rather, led her, with a mastery, a resource, to which she always yielded in case of any serious difference of opinion!  It seemed that they had been abroad together—­had seen many sights in each other’s company—­had many common friends.

Fenwick felt himself strangely sore and jealous as he listened.  Who was this man?  Some young aristocrat, no doubt, born silver spoon in mouth—­one of your idle, insolent rich, with nothing to do but make a hobby of art, and patronise artists.  He loathed the breed.

Her voice startled him back from these unspoken tirades, and once more he found her eyes fixed upon him.  It provoked him to feel that their scrutiny made him self-conscious—­anxious to please.  They were so gentle, so gay!—­and yet behind the first expression there sat what seemed to him the real personality, shrewd, critical, and remote.

‘You must see this picture,’ she said, kindly.  ‘It’s glorious!’