e, Robert had seen something of the
East, and it so happened that he remembered the name of Count Wielandt
as one of the foreign secretaries of legation present at an official
party given by the English Ambassador at Constantinople, which he and
his mother had attended on their return journey, in virtue of a family
connection with the Ambassador. All that he could glean from memory he
made quick use of now, urged at first by the remorseful wish to make
this new world into which he had brought Catherine less difficult than
he knew it must have been during the last quarter of an hour.

But after a while he found himself leading the talk of a section of the
room, and getting excitement and pleasure out of the talk itself. Ever
since that Eastern journey he had kept an eye on the subjects which had
interested him then, reading in his rapid voracious way all that came
across him at Murewell, especially in the Squire's foreign newspapers
and reviews, and storing it when read in a remarkable memory.

Catherine, after the failure of some conversational attempts between her
and Madame de Netteville, fell to watching her husband with a start of
strangeness and surprise. She had scarcely seen him at Oxford among
his equals; and she had very rarely been present at his talks with
the Squire. In some ways, and owing to the instinctive reserves set up
between them for so long, her intellectual knowledge of him was very
imperfect. His ease, his resource among these men of the world, for
whom--independent of all else--she felt a country-woman's dislike,
filled her with a kind of bewilderment.

'Are you new to London?' Lady Aubrey asked her presently, in that tone
of absolute detachment from the person addressed which certain women
manage to perfection. She, too, had been watching the husband, and the
sight had impressed her with a momentary curiosity to know what the
stiff, handsome, dowdily-dressed wife was made of.

'We have been two months here,' said Catherine, her large gray eyes
taking in her companion's very bare shoulders, the costly fantastic
dress, and the diamonds flashing against the white skin.

'In what part?'

'In Bedford Square.'

Lady Aubrey was silent. She had no ideas on the subject of Bedford
Square at command.

'We are very central,' said Catherine, feeling desperately that she was
doing Robert no credit at all, and anxious to talk if only something
could be found to talk about.

'Oh, yes, you are near th