Watson himself, indeed, had never been an _habitue_ of that or any other drawing-room.
As he had told Lord Findon long ago, he was not for the world, nor the world for him.

But whereas his volatile lordship could never draw him from his cell, Lord Findon's daughter was sometimes irresistible, and Watson's great shaggy head and ungainly person was occasionally to be seen beside her fire, in the years before he left London.

He had, therefore, been a spectator of Fenwick's gradual transformation at the hands of a charming woman; he had marked the stages of the process; and he knew well that it had never excited a shadow of scandal in the minds of any reasonable being.

All the same, the deep store of hidden sentiment which this queer idealist possessed had been touched by the position.

The young woman isolated and childless, so charming, so nobly sincere, so full of heart--was she to be always Ariadne, and forsaken?
The man--excitable, nervous, selfish, yet, in truth, affectionate and dependent--what folly, or what chivalry kept him unmarried?
Ever since the death of M.le Comte de Pastourelles, dreams concerning these two people had been stirring in the brain of Watson, and these dreams spoke now in the dark eyes he bent on Fenwick.
Presently, Fenwick began to talk gloomily of the death of his old Bernard Street landlady, who had become his housekeeper and factotum in the new Chelsea house and studio, which he had built for himself.
'I don't know what I shall do without her.