“Quite a presentable fellow!”

There was an unusual ring of excitement in Mrs. Romayne’s voice; it was about ten o’clock in the evening, and she was standing in the middle of her own drawing-room, looking up into Julian’s face, as he stood before her, having just come into the room, smiling back at her with a certain touch of excitement about his appearance also. He was in evening dress; he had evidently bestowed particular pains upon his attire, and the flower in his buttonhole was an exceptionally dainty one.

Mrs. Romayne was also in evening dress, and in evening dress of the most elaborate description. From the point of view of the fashion of the day, her appearance was absolutely perfect; no detail, from the arrangement of her hair to the point of the silk shoe just visible beneath her skirt, had been neglected; everything was in good taste and in the height of fashion, and the effect of the whole, heightened by the background afforded by the quiet little drawing-room with its softly shaded lamps, was almost startling in its suggestion of luxury and refinement. The fashion of the moment was peculiarly becoming to Mrs. Romayne, and evening dress, with its artificialities and its conventionalities, always enhanced her good points, strictly conventional as they were. With that light of excitement on her face, and a certain suggestion about her of verve and vivacity, she looked almost charming enough to justify the boyish exclamations of exaggerated admiration into which Julian had broken on entering the room.

There was an eager, restless happiness in her eyes, which leapt up into almost triumphant life as she gave a little touch to Julian’s buttonhole; and then pushed him a step or two further back, that she might look at him again, and repeated her commendatory words with a laugh. Then, on a little gesture from her, he picked up her cloak, which lay on a chair near, put it carefully about her, and, opening the door for her, followed her downstairs.

Nearly three weeks had elapsed since Julian’s arrival in London, and in that time, short as it was, his expression had changed somewhat. There was a quickened interest and alertness about it which detracted from his boyishness, inasmuch as it made him look as though life had actually begun for him. It would have been wholly untrue to say that any touch of responsibility or ambition had dawned upon his good-looking young face; but a subtle something had come to it which was, perhaps, a materialisation of a mental movement which did duty for those emotions. In the course of those three weeks he had had several interviews with the man with whom he was to read; all the preliminaries of his legal career had been settled; and in more than one half-laughing talk with his mother on the conclusion of some arrangement, the preliminaries had been far outstripped, and he had been conducted in triumph to the bench itself.

But in all these buildings of castles in the air, there was a factor in the foundations of his fortunes never allowed by his mother to drop out of sight; the main factor it became when she was the architect, relegating to a subordinate position even the hard work on which Julian was wont to expatiate with enthusiasm and energy. Sometimes as a means, sometimes as an end, sometimes as the sum total of all human ambition, social success, social position were woven into all his schemes for the future as they talked together; woven in with no direct statements or precepts; but with an insidious insistence, and a tacit assumption of their value in the scale of things as a truism in no need of formulation.

Society life had begun for him with the very day after his arrival in town, and had moved briskly with him through the following weeks; briskly, but in a small way. Easter had intervened, and no large entertainments had been given. To-night was to be, as Mrs. Romayne said gaily as she settled her train and her cloak in the brougham into which he had followed her, his first public appearance. They were on their way to the first “smart affair” of the coming season; a dance to be given at a house in Park Lane; not very large, but very desirable, at which—again on Mrs. Romayne’s authority—all the right people would be.

“You must dance, of course, but not all the evening, Julian!” his mother said, as their drive drew to an end. “I shall want to introduce you a good deal. And don’t engage yourself for supper if you can help it. I’m sorry to be so hard upon you!”

She finished with a laugh, light as her tone had been throughout. Then their carriage drew up suddenly, and her face, in shadow for the moment, changed strangely. For an instant all the happiness, all the excitement and superficiality died out of it, quenched in a kind of revelation of heartsick anxiety so utterly out of all proportion with the occasion, as to be absolutely ghastly; ghastly as only a momentary revelation of the cruel cross-purposes and incongruities of life can be. The next moment, as Julian sprang out of the carriage and turned to help her out, her expression changed again.

It took them some time to get up to the drawing-room, for though the party was by no means a crush, they had arrived at the most fashionable moment, and the staircase was crowded. Salutations, conveyed by graceful movements of the head, passed across an intervening barrier of gay dresses and black coats between Mrs. Romayne and numbers of acquaintances above her or below her on the stairs; and as she smiled and bowed she murmured comments to Julian—names or data, criticisms of dress or appearance—until at last patience, and the continual movement of the stream of which they made part, brought them face to face with their hostess. The conventional handshake, the conventional words of greeting passed between that lady and Mrs. Romayne, and then the latter indicated Julian with a smiling gesture.

“Let me introduce my boy, Lady Arden,” she said. “So glad to have the opportunity!”

She spoke with an accentuation of that self-conscious, self-deriding maternal pride which was her usual pose, setting, as it were, her tone for the night. And certainly Julian, as he bowed, and then shook the hand Lady Arden held out to him, was a legitimate subject for pride. His sense of the importance of the occasion had given to his manner and expression not only that touch of excitement which made him positively handsome, but a certain added readiness and assurance, by no means presuming and very attractive. Lady Arden’s eyes rested on him with obvious approval, as she said the few words the situation demanded with unusual graciousness, and a sign from her brought one of her daughters to her side. She introduced Julian to the girl.

“Take care of Mr. Romayne, Ida,” she said. “He has only lately come to London. Find him some nice partners.”

“And let me have him back by-and-by, please, Lady Ida!” laughed Mrs. Romayne, as they passed on with the girl into the room. “There are some friends of his mother’s to whom he must spare a little time to-night.”

The gay replies with which Julian and his guide—who after a comprehensive glance at him had shown considerable readiness to do her mother’s bidding—disappeared in the crowd were lost to Mrs. Romayne; her attention was claimed by a man at her elbow.

“May I have a dance, Mrs. Romayne?” he said.

Mrs. Romayne shook hands and laughed.

“Well, really I don’t know,” she said; “I think I must give up dancing from to-night. I’ve got a great grown-up son here, do you know. Look, there he is with Lady Ida Arden! Nice-looking boy, isn’t he? It doesn’t seem the right thing for his mother to be dancing about, now does it?”

She laughed again, a gay little laugh, well in the key she had set in her first introduction of Julian, and the man to whom she spoke protested vigorously.

“It seems to me exactly the right thing,” he said. “The idea of your having a grown-up son is the preposterous point, don’t you know. Come, I say, Mrs. Romayne, don’t be so horribly hard-hearted!”

“But I must introduce him, don’t you see. I must do my duty as a mother.”

“Lady Ida is introducing him! She has introduced him to half-a-dozen of the best girls in the room already.”

The colloquy, carried on on either side in the lightest of tones, finally ended in Mrs. Romayne’s promising a “turn by-and-by,” and the couple drifted apart; Mrs. Romayne to find acquaintances close at hand. Among the first she met was Lady Bracondale, condescendingly amiable, to whom she pointed out Julian, with laughing self-excuse. He was dancing now, and dancing extremely well.

“I am so absurdly proud of him!” she said. “I want to introduce him to you by-and-by, if I can catch him. But dancing men are so inconveniently useful.”

Some time had worn away, and she had repeated the substance of this speech in sundry forms to sundry persons, before Julian rejoined her. She had cast several rather preoccupied glances in his direction, when she became aware of him on the opposite side of the room, threading his way through the intervening groups in her direction, just as she was accosted by a rather distinguished-looking, elderly man.

“How do you do, Mrs. Romayne? They tell me that you have a grown-up son here, and I decline to believe it.”

He spoke in a pleasant, refined voice, marred, however, by all the affectation of the day, and with a tone about it as of a man absolutely secure of position and used to some amount of homage. He was a certain Lord Garstin, a distinguished figure in London society, rich, well-bred, and idle. He was troubled with no ideals. Fashionable women, with all the weaknesses which he knew quite well, were quite as high a type of woman as he thought possible; or, at least, desirable; and he had a considerable admiration for Mrs. Romayne as a very highly-finished and attractive specimen of the type he preferred.

She shook hands with him with a laugh, and a gathering together of her social resources, so to speak, which suggested that in her scheme of things he was a power whose suffrage was eminently desirable.

“It is true, notwithstanding,” she said brightly. “I am the proud possessor of a grown-up son, Lord Garstin; a very dear boy, I assure you. We are settling down in London together.”

“Is it possible?” was the answer, uttered with exaggerated incredulity. “And what are you going to do with him, may I ask?”

“He is reading for the bar——” began Mrs. Romayne; and then becoming aware that the subject of her words had by this time reached her side, she turned slightly, and laid her hand on Julian’s arm with a pretty gesture. “Here he is,” she said. “Let me introduce him. Julian, this is Lord Garstin. He has been kindly asking me about you.”

Julian knew all about Lord Garstin, and his tone and manner as he responded to his mother’s words were touched with a deference which made them, as his mother said to herself, “just what they ought to be.” The elder man looked him over with eyes which, as far as their vision extended, were as keen as eyes need be.

“A great many of your mother’s admirers will find it difficult to realise your existence,” he said pleasantly. “Though of course we have all heard of you. You are going to the bar, eh?”

Lord Garstin had a great following among smart young men, and the fact was rather a weakness of his. He liked to have young men about him; to be admired and imitated by them. His manner to Julian was characteristic of these tastes; free from condescension as superiority can only be when it is absolute and unassailable, and full of easy familiarity.

Mrs. Romayne, standing fanning herself between them, listened for Julian’s reply with a certain intent suspense beneath her smile; Lord Garstin’s approval was so important to him. The simple, unaffected frankness of the answer satisfied her ear, and Lord Garstin’s expression, as he listened to it, satisfied her eye; and with a laughing comment on Julian’s words, she allowed her attention to be drawn away for the moment by an acquaintance who claimed it in passing.

There was a slight flush of elation on her face when, a few moments later, the chat between Lord Garstin and Julian being broken off, the former moved away with a friendly nod to the young man, and a little gesture and smile to herself, significant of congratulation.

“Come and walk round the room,” she said gaily, slipping her hand through Julian’s arm. “There are hundreds of people you must be introduced to.”

During the half-hour that followed, Julian was introduced to a large proportion of those people in the room who were best worth knowing. Mrs. Romayne seemed to have wasted no time on the acquaintance of mediocrities.

His presentation to Lady Bracondale had just been accomplished, when Mrs. Halse appeared upon the scene and greeted Mrs. Romayne with stereotyped enthusiasm.

“Such a success!” she said in a loud whisper, as Julian talked to Lady Bracondale. “Everybody is quite taken by surprise. I don’t know why, I’m sure, but I don’t think any one was prepared for such a charming young man. I’ve been quite in love with him ever since I saw him first, you know, and we really must have him on the bazaar committee.” Mrs. Halse had been out of town for Easter, and the affairs of the bazaar had been somewhat in abeyance in consequence. “Mr. Romayne,” she continued, seizing upon Julian, “I want to talk to you. You really must help me——”

At this juncture the man who had pressed Mrs. Romayne to dance earlier in the evening came up to her and claimed the promise she had made him then. She cast a glance of laughing pity at Julian, intended for his eyes alone, and moved away.

“It was too bad, mother,” he declared, laughing, as he met her a little later coming out of the dancing-room. “Now, to make up you must have one turn with me—just one. We haven’t danced together for ages.”

He was full of eagerness, a little flushed with the excitement of the evening, and her laughing protestations, her ridicule of him for wanting to dance with his mother, went for nothing. They only let loose on her a torrent of boyish persuasion, and finally she hesitated, laughed undecidedly, and yielded. She, too, was a little flushed and elated, as though with triumph.

“One turn, then, you absurd boy!” she said; and she let him draw her hand through his arm and lead her back into the dancing-room. They went only half-a-dozen times round the room in spite of his protestations against stopping, but Mrs. Romayne was too excellent a dancer and too striking a figure for those turns to pass unnoticed. When she stopped and made him take her, flushed and laughing, out of the room, she was instantly surrounded by a group of men vehemently reproaching her for dancing with her son to the exclusion of so many would-be partners, and laughingly denouncing Julian.

“I couldn’t help it!” she protested gaily. “Yes, I know it’s a ridiculous sight, but we are rather ridiculous, we two, you know! Come, Julian, take me home this moment! Let me disappear covered with confusion.”

She went swiftly downstairs as she spoke, laughing prettily, and a few minutes later Julian, with a good deal of extraneous and wholly unnecessary assistance, was putting her into her carriage.

The whole evening had gone off admirably, Mrs. Romayne said the next morning; repeating the dictum with which she had parted from Julian at night, with less excitement, but with undiminished satisfaction.

During the course of the next three or four weeks that satisfaction—a certain genuine and deliberate satisfaction which seemed to underlie the superficial gaiety and brightness of her manner—seemed to grow upon her. The season had begun early, and very gaily, and she and Julian were in great request. It was perhaps as well that little work was expected of the embryo barrister before the winter, for he and his mother were out night after night; welcomed and made much of wherever they went, as so attractive a pair—one of whom was steeped to the finger-tips in knowledge of her world—were sure to be. Mrs. Romayne arranged a series of weekly dinner-parties in the little house at Chelsea, which promised to be, in a small way, one of the features of the season. They were very small, very select, and very cheery; no better hostess was to be found in London, and there was a touch of sentiment about the relation between the hostess and the pleasant young host, which was by no means without charm for the guests.

Mrs. Halse’s bazaar, too, which was affording far more entertainment to its promoters than it seemed at all likely to afford to its supporters, served to bring Julian into special prominence. He was not clever, but there is a great deal to be done in connection with a bazaar on which intellect would be thrown away, and Julian proved himself what Mrs. Halse described effusively as “a most useful dear!” an expression by which she probably meant to convey the fact that he was always ready to toil for the ladies’ committee, without too close an investigation into the end to be attained by the said toiling. He was quite an important person at all the meetings connected with the bazaar, and the fact gave him a standing with the innumerable “smart” people concerned which he would otherwise hardly have attained so soon.

His introduction to Lord Garstin resulted, about a fortnight after it took place, in an invitation to a bachelor dinner. An invitation to one of Lord Garstin’s dinners was, in its way, about as desirable a thing as a young man “in Society” could receive; and the pleased, repressed importance on Julian’s face as he came into the drawing-room to his mother before he started to keep the engagement, was like a faint reflection of the satisfaction with which Mrs. Romayne’s expression was transfused.

“You’re going?” she said brightly. “Well, I shall be at the Ponsonbys’ by half-past eleven, and I shall expect you there some time before twelve. Enjoy yourself, sir!”

He kissed her with careless affection, and she patted him on the shoulder for a conceited boy as he hoped, lightly, that she would not find her solitary evening dull; she had refused to dine out without him, saying laughingly that she should enjoy a holiday; and then he went off, whistling gaily and arranging his buttonhole.

It wanted a few minutes only to the dinner-hour when he arrived at the club where the dinner was to be given. Three of his fellow guests were already assembled, and to two of these—well-known young men about town—he had already been introduced.

“You know these two fellows, I think,” said Lord Garstin lightly, “but”—turning to the third man—“Loring tells me that you and he have not yet been introduced. I’m delighted to perform the ceremony! Mr. Julian Romayne—Mr. Marston Loring!”

Julian held out his hand with a frank exclamation of pleasure. He had recognised in Mr. Marston Loring a young man whom he had seen about incessantly during the past month, and who had excited a good deal of secret and boyish admiration in him by reason of a certain assumption of blasÉ cynicism with which an excellent society manner was just sufficiently seasoned to give it character. It was conventional character enough, but it was not to be expected that Julian should understand that.

“I’m awfully glad to meet you,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve known you by sight for ages!”

“And I you!” was the answer, spoken with a slight smile and a touch of cordiality which delighted Julian. “The pleasure is distinctly mutual.”

Marston Loring was not a good-looking young man; his features, indeed, would have been insignificant but for the presence of that spurious air of refinement which life in society usually produces; and for something more genuine, namely, a strength and resolution about the mould of his chin and the set of his thin lips which had won him a reputation for being “clever-looking” among the superficial observers of the social world. He was nine-and-twenty, but his face might have been the face of a man twenty years older—so entirely destitute was it of any of the gracious possibilities which should characterise early manhood. It was pale and lined, and worn with very ugly suggestiveness; and there were stories told about him, whispered and laughed at in many of the houses where he was received, which accounted amply for those lines. The pose, too, which it pleased him to adopt was that of elderly superiority to all the illusions and credulities of youth. Marston Loring was a man of whom it was vaguely but universally said that he had “got on so well!” Reduced to facts, this statement meant, primarily, that with no particular rights in that direction he had gradually worked his way into a position in society—a position the insecurity and unreality of which was known only to himself; and, secondarily, that by dint of influence, hard work—hard work was also part of his pose—and a certain amount of unscrupulousness, he was making money at the bar when most men dependent on their profession would have starved at it.

He had brown eyes, dull and curiously shallow-looking, but very keen and calculating, and they were even keener than usual as they gave Julian one quick look.

“I think we belong to the same profession?” he said with easy friendliness. “You are reading with Allardyce, are you not? A good man, Allardyce.”

“So they tell me,” answered Julian, not a little impressed by the critical and experienced tone of the approbation. “I can’t say I’ve done much with him yet. One doesn’t do much at this time of year, you know.”

Loring smiled rather sardonically.

“That’s what it is to be a gentleman of independent fortune,” he said. “Some people have to burn the candle at both ends.”

The five minutes’ chat which ensued before the arrival of the fifth guest—a certain Lord Hesseltine, known only by sight to Julian—and the announcement of dinner, was just enough to create a regret in Julian’s mind when he found that he and his new acquaintance were seated on opposite sides of the table. Loring’s contribution to the general conversation throughout dinner, witty, cynical, and assured, completed his conquest, and when, on the subsequent adjournment of the party to the smoking-room, Loring strolled up to him, cigar in hand, the prospect of a tÊte-À-tÊte was greatly to Julian’s satisfaction.

“What an odd thing it is that we should never have been introduced before!” he began, lighting his own cigar and scanning the other man with youthful, admiring eyes.

“It is odd,” returned Loring placidly, throwing himself into an arm-chair as he spoke, and signing an invitation to Julian to establish himself in another. “Especially as, like every one else, I’ve been an immense admirer of your mother all this year. I wonder whether you recognise what a lucky fellow you are, Romayne?”

Julian’s eyes sparkled with pleasure at the easy familiarity of the address, and he crossed his legs with careless self-importance, as he answered, with the lightness of youth:

“I ought to, oughtn’t I? I say, I know my mother would be awfully pleased to know you. You must let me introduce you to her. Are you coming on to the Ponsonbys’ to-night?”

“I shall be only too delighted,” answered Loring, watching the smoke from his cigar with his dull, brown eyes, and answering the first part of Julian’s speech. “No, unfortunately I’ve got an affair in Chelsea to-night, and another in Kensington. But we shall meet to-morrow night at the Bracondales’, I suppose?”

“Of course,” assented Julian eagerly. “That will be capital!”

There was a moment’s pause, broken by Loring with a reference to a political opinion formulated by one of the other men at dinner; and a talk about politics ensued, eager on Julian’s part, cynical and effectively reserved on Loring’s. A political discussion, when the discussers hold the same political faith, has much the same effect in promoting rapid intimacy between men, granted a predisposition towards intimacy on either side, as a discussion of the reigning fashion in dress has with a certain class of women. When Lord Garstin’s dinner-party began to break up, and Loring and Julian rose to take their departure, they parted with a hand-clasp which would have befitted an acquaintanceship three months, rather than three hours old.

“Good night,” said Julian. “Awfully pleased to have met you, Loring. See you to-morrow night. My mother will be delighted.”

“I shall be delighted,” said Loring. “All right, then. To-morrow night we’ll arrange that look in at the House. Good night.”

A few minutes’ talk with Lord Garstin, who had taken a decided fancy to “that charming little woman’s boy,” and Julian was standing on the pavement of St. James’s Street, with that pleasant sense of exhilaration and warmth of heart, which is an attendant, in youth, on the inauguration of a new friendship.

It was a night in early May, and a fine, hot day had ended, as evening drew on, in sultry closeness. The clouds had been rolling up steadily, though not a breath of air seemed to be stirring now, and it was evident that a storm was inevitable before long. Julian was hot and excited; he had only a short distance to go; he looked up at the sky and decided—the wish being father to the thought—that it would “hold up for the present,” and that he would walk.

He set out up St. James’s Street and along Piccadilly, taking the right road by instinct, his busy thoughts divided between satisfaction at the idea of belonging to the “best” club in London, introduced thereinto by Lord Garstin; and Loring and his gifts and graces. He had just turned into Berkeley Street when a rattling peal of thunder roused him with a start, and the next instant the thunder was followed by a perfect deluge of rain.

It was so sudden and he was so entirely unprepared, that his only instinct for the moment was to step back hastily into the shelter of a portico in front of which he was just passing; and as he did so, he noticed a young woman who must have been following him up the street, a young woman in the shabby hat and jacket of a work-girl, take refuge, perforce, beneath the same shelter with a shrinking movement which was not undignified, though it seemed to imply that she was almost more afraid of him than of the drenching, bitter rain. Then, his reasoning powers reasserting themselves in the comparative security of the portico, he began to consider what he should do. He was within seven minutes’ walk of his destination, but seven minutes’ walk in such rain as was beating down on the pavement before him would render him wholly unfit to present himself at a party; and “of course,” as he said to himself, there was not a cab to be seen. A blinding flash of lightning cut across his reflections, and drove him back a step or two farther into shelter involuntarily. And as a terrific peal of thunder followed it instantaneously, he glanced almost unconsciously at the sharer of his shelter.

“By Jove!” he said to himself.

The girl had retreated, as he himself had done, and was standing close up against the door of the house to which the portico belonged, in the extreme corner from that which he himself occupied. But except for that tacit acknowledgement of his presence, she seemed no longer conscious of it. She was looking straight out at the storm, her head a little lifted as though to catch a glimpse of the sky; and her face, outlined by her dark clothes and the dark paint of the door behind her, stood out in great distinctness. It was rather thin and pale, and very tired-looking; the large brown eyes were heavy and haggard. It was not worthy of a second glance at that moment, according to any canon of the world in which Julian lived, and yet it drew from him that exclamation of startled admiration. He had never seen anything like it, he told himself vaguely.

Apparently the intent gaze, of which he himself was hardly conscious, affected its object. She moved uneasily, and turning as if involuntarily, met his eyes.

The next instant she was moving hastily from under the portico, when the driver of a hansom cab became aware of Julian’s existence, and pulled up suddenly.

“Hansom, sir?” he shouted.

“Yes!” answered Julian quickly, dashing across the drenched pavement. “A hundred and three, Berkeley Square!”