Meanwhile he seemed to have lost Madame de Pastourelles, and must needs fall back on the private secretary beside him.  This gentleman, who had already entered him on the tablets of the mind as a mannerless outsider, was not particularly communicative.  But at least Fenwick learned the names of the other guests.  The well-known Ambassador beside Lady Findon, with a shrewd, thin, sulky face, and very black eyes under whitish hair—­eyes turned much more frequently on the pretty actress to his right than upon his hostess; a financier opposite, much concerned with great colonial projects; the Cabinet Minister—­of no account, it seemed, either in the House or the Cabinet—­and his wife, abnormally thin, and far too discreet for the importance of her husband’s position; a little farther, the wife of the red-haired Academician, a pale, frightened creature who looked like her husband’s apology, and was in truth his slave;—­all these he learned gradually to discriminate.

So this was the great world.  He was stormily pleased to be in it, and at the same time scornful of it.  It seemed to contain not a few ancient shams and hollow pretenders—­

Ah! once more the soft, ingratiating voice beside him.  Madame de Pastourelles was expressing a flattering wish to see his picture, of which her father had talked so much.

’And he says you have found such a beautiful model—­or, rather, better than beautiful—­characteristic.’

Fenwick stared at her.  It was on the tip of his tongue to say ’She is my wife.’  But he did not say it.  He imagined her look of surprise—­’Ah, my father had no idea!’—­imagined it with a morbid intensity, and saw no way of confronting or getting round it; not at the dinner-table, anyway—­with all these eyes and ears about him—­above all, with Lord Findon opposite.  Why, they might think he had been ashamed of Phoebe!—­that there was some reason for hiding her away.  It was ridiculous—­most annoying and absurd; but now that the thing had happened, he must really choose his own moment for unravelling the coil.

So he stammered something unintelligible about a ‘Westmoreland type,’ and then hastily led the talk to some other schemes he had in mind.  With the sense of having escaped a danger he found his tongue for the first time, and the power of expressing himself.

Madame de Pastourelles listened attentively—­drew him out, indeed—­made him show himself to the best advantage.  And presently, at a moment of pause, she said, with a smile and a shrug, ’How happy you are to have an art!  Now I—­’

She let her hand fall with a little plaintive movement.

‘I am sure you paint,’ said Fenwick, eagerly.

‘No.’

‘Then you are musical?’

‘Not at all.  I embroider—­’

‘All women should,’ said Fenwick, trying for a free and careless air.

‘I read—­’

‘You do not need to say it.’

She opened her eyes at this readiness of reply; but still pursued: