'Well, I'm as good as he--as either of them,' thought Fenwick fiercely, as he handled a Cosway. 'Only they can talk these people's lingo, and I can't. I can paint as well as they any day--and I'll be bound, if they let me alone, I could talk as well. Why do people ask you to their houses and then ill-treat you? Damn them!'
Meanwhile, Lord Findon had had a few whispered words with his daughter in an inner room.
'My dear!'--throwing up his hands--'a _barbarian_! Can't have him here again.'
'Of course. Cuningham ought to have warned me. However, I suppose I brought it on myself. I do these rash things, and must pay for them. He was so rude to De Chailles that I have had to apologise.'
'In the other room--looking at things. Better leave him alone.'
'Well, let him. A man ought to be made to understand that he can't behave like that.'
'My dear, he spoiled the whole business after dinner--harangued the table!--as good as told De Chailles he had no right to talk about Irving or Shakespeare, being a foreigner. You never saw such an exhibition!'
'Poor Mr. Fenwick. I must go and talk to him.'
'Eugénie, don't be a goose. Why should you take any trouble about him?'
'He's wonderfully clever, papa. And clever people are always getting into scrapes. Somebody must take him in hand.'
And, rising, she threw her father a whimsical backward look as she departed. Lord Findon watched her with mingled smiles and chagrin. How charmingly she was dressed to-night--his poor Eugénie! And how beautifully she moved!--with what grace and sweetness! As he turned to do his duty by an elderly countess near him, he stifled a sigh--that was also an imprecation.
It had often been said of Eugénie de Pastourelles that she possessed a social magic. She certainly displayed it on this occasion. Half an hour later Lord Findon, who was traversing the drawing-rooms after having taken the Ambassadress to her carriage, found a regenerate and humanised Fenwick sitting beside his daughter; the centre, indeed, of a circle no less friendly to untutored talent than the circle of the dinner-table had been hostile. Lord Findon stopped to listen. Really the young man was now talking decently!--about matters he understood; Burne-Jones, Rossetti--some French pictures in Bond Street--and so forth. The ruffled host was half appeased, half wroth. For if he _could_ make this agreeable impression, why such a superfluity of naughtiness downstairs? And the fellow had really some general cultivation; nothing like Welby, of course--where would you find another Arthur Welby?--but enough to lift him above the mere journeyman. After all, one must be indulgent to these novices--with no traditions behind them--and no--well, to put it plainly--no grandfathers! And so, with reflexions of this kind, the annoyance of a good-natured man subsided.