Lord Findon watched her with mingled smiles and chagrin.
How charmingly she was dressed to-night--his poor Eugenie! 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 Eugenie 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.