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This was the suggestion of the Findon's solicitor, and Fenwick eagerly endorsed it. Presently inquiry had been made from every management in London as to the touring companies of the year; confidential agents had been sent to every provincial town that possessed a theatre; long lists of names had been compiled and carefully scanned.
But suddenly, just as the maids had been warned, and Lord Findon's man had been sent to look out trains, his master caught a chill, going obstinately, and in a mocking spirit, to see what 'Faust' might be like, as given at the Municipal Theatre of Versailles. There was fever, and a touch of bronchitis; nothing serious; but the doctor who had been summoned from Paris would not hear of travelling.
Fenwick went into the restaurant and Eugénie hurried through the courtyard to the door of the Findon's apartment. But in her reflexions of the night, Eugénie came to the conclusion that the situation, as it then stood at Versailles, was not one to be prolonged. Next day she proposed to her father and sister a change of plan.
Eugénie put out a hand and patted his shoulder tenderly. She and her father were the best of comrades, and they showed it most plainly in Lady Findon's absence. That lady was again on her travels, occupied in placing her younger daughter for a time in a French family, with a view to 'finishing. Eugénie or Lord Findon wrote to her every day; they discussed her letters when they arrived with all proper égards; and, for the rest, enjoyed their tête-
'Because? Lord Findon's face expressed a quick and tender anxiety. 'I want to persuade him to marry Elsie Bligh. Lord Findon made a hurried exclamation, drew her to him, kissed her on the brow, and then, releasing her, turned away. 'I might have known what you would do, he said, in a muffled voice.
At first all looked well. A London dinner-party loves novelty, and is always ready to test the stranger within its gates. Fenwick slipped into the battle as a supporter of Lord Findon's argument, and his host with smiling urbanity welcomed him to the field. But in a few minutes the newcomer had ravaged the whole of it.
None the less his bitter realisation of it had worked with crushing effect upon a miserable man. About Christmas, Lord Findon's health had again caused his family anxiety. He was ordered to Cannes, and Eugénie accompanied him.
But whereas his volatile lordship could never draw him from his cell, Lord Findon's daughter was sometimes irresistible, and Watson's great shaggy head and ungainly person was occasionally to be seen beside her fire, in the years before he left London.
The man's an ass must be an ass! let him bray his bray! Why, you remember Perry? Marindin? On which there followed a rattling catalogue of matrimonial failures in the artist world, amusing enough perhaps a little cruel. Cuningham laughed. Watson, on whom Lord Findon's whole personality seemed to have an effect more irritating than agreeable, fidgeted with his brushes.
'Well, she's Lord Findon's daughter that tells you. They're pretty well at the top. Phoebe asked various other questions, then fell silent, still pondering the sketches. After a while she put down her work and came to sit on a stool beside Fenwick, sometimes laying her golden head against his knee, or stretching out her hand to touch his.
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