"Who is the young lady with Mrs. Forrester?" he asked presently. "In white, with yellow hair. Just in front of us. Do you know?"
Betty had leaned forward to look. "Don't you even know her by sight?" she said. "That is Miss Woodruff, the girl who follows Madame Okraska everywhere. She attached herself to her years ago, I believe, in Rome or Paris;—some sort of little art-student she was. What a bore that sort of devotion must be. Isn't she queer?"
"I had heard that she's an adopted daughter," said Captain Ashton; "the child of Norwegian peasants, and that Madame Okraska found her in a Norwegian forest—by moonlight;—a most romantic story."
"A fable, I think. Someone was telling me about her the other day. She is only a camp-follower and protégée; and a compatriot of mine. She is an orphan and Madame Okraska supports her."
"She doesn't look like a protégée," said Gregory Jardine, his eyes on the young person thus described; "she looks like a protector."
"I should think she must be most of all a problem," said Betty. "What a price to pay for celebrity—these hangers-on who make one ridiculous by their infatuation. Madame Okraska is incapable of defending herself against them, I hear. The child's clothes might have come from Norway!"
The protégée, protector or problem, who turned to them now and then her oddly blunted, oddly resolute young profile, had tawny hair, and a sun-browned skin. She wore a little white silk frock with flat bows of dull blue upon it. Her evening cloak was bordered with swansdown. Two black bows, one at the crown of her head and one at the nape of her neck, secured the thick plaits of her hair, which was parted and brushed up from her forehead in a bygone school-girlish fashion. She made Gregory think of a picture by Alfred Stevens he had seen somewhere and of an archaic Greek statue, and her appearance and demeanour interested him. He continued to look at her while the unrest and expectancy of the audience rolled into billows of excitement.
A staid, melancholy man, forerunner of the great artist, had appeared and performed his customary and cryptic function. "Why do they always screw up the piano-stool at the last moment!" Betty Jardine murmured. "Is it to pepper our tongues with anguish before the claret?—Oh, she must be coming now! She always keeps one waiting like this!"
The billows had surged to a storm. Signs of frenzy were visible in the faces on the platform. They had caught a glimpse of the approaching divinity.
"Here she is!" cried Betty Jardine. Like everybody else she was clapping frantically, like everybody, that is, except Gregory Jardine; for Gregory, his elbow in his hand, his fingers still neatly twisting the end of his moustache, continued to observe the young girl in the front row, whose face, illuminated and irradiated, was upturned to the figure now mounting to the platform.