benefit, and of something behind--a spirit watchful and still--wrapt
in a great melancholy--or perhaps a great rebellion? And by this sense
of something concealed or strongly restrained, she began to affect
his imagination, and so, presently, to absorb his attention. Something
exquisite in her movements and looks, also in the quality of her voice
and the turn of her phrases, drew from his own crude yet sensitive
nature an excited response. He began to envisage what these highly
trained women of the upper class, these _raffinées_ of the world, may
be for those who understand them--a stimulus, an enigma, an education.

It flashed on him that women of this type could teach him much that he
wanted to know; and his ambition seized on the idea. But what chance
that she would ever give another thought to the raw artist to whom her
father had flung a passing invitation?

He made haste, indeed, to prove his need of her or some other Egeria;
for she was no sooner departed with the other ladies than he came
to mischief. Left alone with the gentlemen, his temperament asserted
itself. He had no mind in any company to be merely a listener.
Moreover, that slight, as he regarded it, of sending him down without
a lady, still rankled; and last, but not least, he had drunk a good
deal of champagne, to which he was quite unaccustomed. So that when
Lord Findon fell into a discussion with the Ambassador of Irving's
_Hamlet_ and _Othello_, then among the leading topics of London--when
the foreigner politely but emphatically disparaged the English actor
and Lord Findon with zeal defended him--who should break into the
august debate but this strong-browed, black-eyed fellow, from no one
knew where, whose lack of some of the smaller conventions had already
been noticed by a few of the company.