So they left Audrey to herself. She turned back and went down the room to see "The Witch of Atlas," the lady robed in her "subtle veil" of starbeams and mist. Her view of this picture was somewhat obstructed by a stout gentleman who, together with a thin lady, was taking up the whole of the available space before it. His companion, a badly-dressed young woman with a double eye-glass, was trying to decipher the lines quoted in her catalogue. As Audrey paused she looked up and stared, as only a woman with a double eye-glass can stare, at the same time attracting the stout gentleman's attention by a movement of her elbow.
"Look, uncle, quick! That's her! That's the person!"
"What's that, Nettie?" (The stout gentleman swung round as if on a pivot, as Audrey moved gracefully by.) "You don't mean to say so? Where's Ted?"
She walked on through the rooms, depressed by the meeting with Knowles—it suggested Wyndham. She would be meeting him next. And indeed she met him in the first gallery, where her aimless wanderings had brought her again.
His wife was with him. Audrey knew that she must meet her some time, and she had expected to see in Alison Fraser an enlarged edition of herself; she had even feared an édition de luxe, which would have been intolerable. She was prepared for distinction; but she saw with a finer agony the slight figure, the sweet proud face with its setting of pale gold hair, and worse than all, the indefinable air of remoteness and reserve which made Mrs. Langley Wyndham more than a "distinguished" woman. Wyndham lifted his hat and would have passed on; but Audrey, to show her perfect self-possession, stopped and held out her hand. He felt it trembling as he took it in a preoccupied manner; and Mrs. Langley Wyndham became instantly absorbed in picture No. 1.
"Have you seen young Haviland's performance?" asked Wyndham. (He had to say something.)
"Yes; it's a very fine study."
"So Knowles tells me. But everything's a fine study in this collection. There ought to be 'a fine' for the abuse of that expression."
"But it really is; go and see for yourself."
"It's his sister, isn't it?"