t French world, talking as he never talked in London, and cultivating,
whether in the theatre or in the _salons_ of his sister's friends or in
the studios of some of the more eminent of French artists, a fastidious
critical temper, which was rapidly becoming more and more exacting, more
and more master of the man.

Now, on this May afternoon, as he settled himself down to his work, it
would have given any of those who liked Eustace Kendal--and they were
many--pleasure to see how the look of fatigue with which he had returned
from his round of the Academy faded away, how he shook back the tumbling
gray locks from his eyes with the zest and the eagerness of one setting
forth to battle, and how, as time passed on and the shadows deepened on
the white spire opposite, the contentment of successful labour showed
itself in the slow unconscious caress which fell upon the back of the
sleeping cat curled up in the chair beside him, or in the absent but
still kindly smile with which he greeted the punctual entrance of the
servant, who at five o'clock came to put tea and the evening paper beside
him and to make up the fire, which crackled on with cheery companionable
sounds through the lamp-lit evening and far into the night.

CHAPTER II

Two or three days afterwards, Kendal, in looking over his
engagement-book, in which the entries were methodically kept, noticed
'Afternoon tea, Mrs. Stuart's, Friday,' and at once sent off a note to
Edward Wallace, suggesting that they should go to the theatre together on
Thursday evening to see Miss Bretherton, 'for, as you will see,' he
wrote, 'it will be impossible for me to meet her with a good conscience
unless I have done my duty beforehand by going to see her perform.' To
this the American replied by a counter proposal. 'Miss Bretherton,' he
wrote, 'offers my sister and myself a box for Friday night; it will hold
four or five; you must certainly be of the party, and I shall ask
Forbes.'

Kendal felt himself a little entrapped, and would have preferred to see
the actress under conditions more favourable to an independent judgment,
but he was conscious that a refusal would be ungracious, so he accepted,
and prepared himself to meet the beauty in as sympathetic a frame of mind
as possible.

On Friday afternoon, after a long and fruitful day's work, he found
himself driving westward towards the old-fashioned Kensington house of
which Mrs. Stuart, with her bright, bird-like, America