The correspondence indeed which had arisen between them out of Fenwick's first remarkable letter to her, had led unconsciously to a new attitude on the part of Madame de Pastourelles. That he was an interesting and promising artist she knew; that on subjects connected with his art he could talk copiously and well, that also, she knew; but that he could write, with such pleasant life, detail, and ingenuity, was a surprise, and it attracted her, as it would have attracted a French-woman of the eighteenth century. Her maimed life had made her perforce an 'intellectual'; and in these letters, the man's natural poetry and force stirred her enthusiasm. Hence a new interest and receptivity in her, quickened by many small and natural incidents--books lent and discussed, meetings in picture-galleries, conversations in her father's house, and throughout it that tempting, dangerous pleasure of 'doing good,' that leads astray so many on whom Satan has no other hold! She was introducing him every week to new friends--her friends, the friends she wished him to have; she was making his social way plain before him; she had made her father buy his pictures; and she meant to 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 Eugénie 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.
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.