look after his career in the future.

So that, quivering as she still was under the strain of her scene
with Welby--so short, so veiled, and at bottom so tragic!--she showed
herself glitteringly cheerful--almost gay--as she stood talking a
few minutes with her father and Fenwick. The restless happiness in
Fenwick's face and movements gave his visitors indeed so much pleasure
that they found it hard to go; several times they said good-bye, only
to plunge again into the sketches and studies that lay littered
about the room, to stand chatting before the new canvas, to laugh and
gossip--till Lord Findon remembered that Eugenie did not yet know
that he had offered Fenwick five hundred pounds for the two pictures
instead of four hundred and fifty pounds; and that he might have
the prompt satisfaction of telling her that he had bettered her
instructions, he at last dragged her away. On this day of all days,
did he wish to please her!--if it were only in trifles.

CHAPTER VIII

When Fenwick was alone, he walked to a chest of drawers in which he
kept a disorderly multitude of possessions, and took out a mingled
handful of letters, photographs, and sketches. Throwing them on a
table, he looked for and found a photograph of Phoebe with Carrie on
her knee, and a little sketch of Phoebe--one of the first ideas for
the 'Genius Loci.' He propped them up against some books, and looked
at them in a passion of triumph.

'It's all right, old woman--it's all right!' he murmured, smiling.
Then he spread out Lord Findon's cheque before the photograph, as
though he offered it at Phoebe's shrine.

Five hundred pounds! Well, it was only what his work was worth--what
he had every right to expect. None the less, the actual possession of
the money seemed to change his whole being. What would his old
father say? He gave a laugh, half-scornful, half-good-humoured, as
he admitted to himself that not even now--probably--would the old man
relent.

And Phoebe!--he imagined the happy wonder in her eyes--the rolling
away of all clouds between them. For six weeks now he had been a
veritable brute about letters! First, the strain of his work (and the
final wrestle with the 'Genius Loci,' including the misfortune of
the paints, had really been a terrible affair!)--then--he confessed
it--the intellectual excitement of the correspondence with Madame de
Pastourelles: between these two obsessions, or emotions, poor Phoebe
had fared ill.

'But y