Mrs. Romayne had been left, eighteen years before, absolutely penniless. When Dennis Falconer took her back from Nice to her uncle’s home in London, she had returned to that house wholly dependent, for herself and for her little five-year-old boy, on the generosity she would meet with there. Fortunately old Mr. Falconer was a rich man. There had been a good deal of money in the Falconer family, and as its representatives decreased in number, that money had collected itself in the hands of a few survivors.

A long nervous illness, slight enough in itself, but begetting considerable restlessness and irritability, had followed on her return to London. So natural, her tender-hearted cousin and uncle had said, though, as a matter of fact, such an illness was anything but natural in such a woman as Mrs. Romayne, and anything but consistent with her demeanour during the early days of her widowhood. Partly by the advice of the doctor, partly by reason of the sense, unexpressed but shared by all concerned, that London was by no means a desirable residence for the widow of William Romayne, old Mr. Falconer and his daughter left their quiet London home and went abroad with her. No definite period was talked of for their return to England, and they settled down in a charming little house near the Lake of Geneva.

In the same house, when Julian was seven years old, Frances Falconer died. Her death was comparatively sudden, and the blow broke her father’s heart. From that time forward his only close interests in life were Mrs. Romayne and her boy. The vague expectation of a return to London at some future time faded out altogether. Mr. Falconer’s only desire was to please his niece, and she, with the same tendency towards seclusion which had dictated their first choice of a Continental home, suggested a place near Heidelberg. Here they lived for five years more, and then Mr. Falconer, also, died, leaving the bulk of his property to Mrs. Romayne. The remainder was to go to Dennis Falconer; to his only other near relation, William Romayne’s little son, he left no money.

So seven years after her husband’s death Mrs. Romayne was a rich woman again; rich and independent as she had never been before, and practically alone in the world with her son. In her relations with her son, those seven years had brought about a curious alteration or developement.

The dawnings of this change had been observed by Frances Falconer during the early months of Mrs. Romayne’s widowhood. She had spoken to her father with tears in her eyes of her belief that her cousin was turning for consolation to her child. Blindly attached to her cousin, she had never acknowledged her previous easy indifference as a mother. She stood by while the first place in little Julian’s easy affections was gradually won away from herself not only without a thought of resentment, but without any capacity for the criticism of Mrs. Romayne’s demeanour in her new capacity as a devoted mother. To her that devotion was the natural and beautiful outcome of the overthrow of her cousin’s married life. To sundry other people the new departure presented other aspects. Dennis Falconer, spending a few days at the house near the Lake of Geneva, regarded with eyes of stern distaste what seemed to him the most affected, superficial travesty of the maternal sentiment ever exhibited. Meditating upon the subject by himself, he referred Mrs. Romayne’s assumption of the character of devoted mother to the innate artificiality of a fashionable woman denied the legitimate outlet of society life. He went away marvelling at the blindness of his uncle and cousin, and asking himself with heavy disapprobation how long the pose would last.

Time, as a matter of fact, seemed only to confirm it. The half-laughing, wholly artificial manner with which Mrs. Romayne had alluded to her “boy” in Mrs. Pomeroy’s drawing-room was the same manner with which, in his early school-days, she had alluded to her “little boy,” only developed by years. Mr. Falconer’s death and her own consequent independence had made no difference in her way of life. Julian’s education had been proceeded with on the Continent as had been already arranged, his mother living always near at hand that they might be together whenever it was possible. In his holidays they took little luxurious tours together. But into society Mrs. Romayne went not at all until Julian was over twenty; when the haze of fifteen years had wound itself about the memory of William Romayne and his misdeeds.

Of those misdeeds William Romayne’s son knew nothing. The one point of discord between old Mr. Falconer and his niece had been her alleged intention of keeping the truth from him, if possible, for ever. Mr. Falconer’s death removed the only creature who had a right to protest against her decision. When Julian, as he grew older, asked his first questions about his father, she told him that he had “failed,” and had died suddenly, and begged him not to question her. And the boy, careless and easy-going, had taken her at her word.

With the termination of Julian’s university career, it became necessary that some arrangement should be made for his future. As Julian grew up, the topic had come up between the mother and son with increasing frequency, introduced as a rule not, as might have been expected, by the young man, whom it most concerned, but by Mrs. Romayne. From the very first it had been presented to him as a foregone conclusion that the start in life to which he was to look forward was to be made in London. London was to be their home, and he was to read for the English bar; on these premises all Mrs. Romayne’s plans and suggestions were grounded, and Julian’s was not the nature to carve out the idea of a future for himself in opposition to that presented to him. Consequently the arrangements, of which the bright little house in Chelsea was the preliminary outcome, were matured with much gaiety and enthusiasm, in what Mrs. Romayne called merrily “a family council of two”; and a certain touch of feverish excitement which had pervaded his mother’s consideration of the subject, moved Julian to a carelessly affectionate compunction in that it was presumably for his sake that she had remained so long away from the life she apparently preferred.

The arrangement by which Mrs. Romayne eventually came to London alone was not part of the original scheme. As the time fixed for their departure thither drew nearer, that feverish excitement increased upon her strangely. It seemed as an expression of the nervous restlessness that possessed her that she finally insisted on his joining some friends who were going for two months to Egypt, and leaving her to “struggle with the agonies of furnishing,” as she said, alone.

The arrangement had separated the mother and son for the first time within Julian’s memory. The fact had, perhaps, had little practical influence on his enjoyment in the interval, but it gave an added fervour to his boyish demonstration of delight in that first moment of meeting as he held her in his vigorous young arms, and kissed her again and again.

“To think of my having surprised you, after all!” he cried gleefully, at last. “You ought to have had my telegram this morning. Why, you’ve got nervous while you’ve been alone, mother! You’re quite trembling!”

Mrs. Romayne laughed a rather uncertain little laugh. She was indeed trembling from head to foot. Her face was very pale still, but as she raised it to her son the strange, transfigured look had passed from it utterly, and her normal expression had returned to it in all its superficial liveliness, brought back by an effort of will, conscious or instinctive, which was perceptible in the slight stiffness of all the lines. At the same moment she seemed to become aware of the close, clinging pressure with which her hand had closed upon the arm which held her, and she relaxed it in a gesture of playful rebuke and deprecation.

“What would you have, bad boy?” she said lightly. “Don’t you know I hate surprises? Oh, I suppose you want to flatter yourself that your poor little mother can’t get on without you to take care of her! Well, perhaps she can’t, very well. There’s a demoralising confession for you, sir!”

But it was not such a confession as her face had been only a few minutes before; in fact, the spoken words seemed rather to belie that mute witness. They were spoken in her ordinary tone, and the gesture with which she laid her hand on his arm to draw him into the drawing-room was one of her usual pretty, affected gestures—as sharp a contrast as possible to the first clinging, unconscious touch.

“Let me look at you,” she said gaily, “and make sure that I have got my own bad penny back from Africa, and not somebody else’s!”

She drew him laughingly into the fullest light the fading day afforded, and proceeded to “inspect” him, as she said, her face full of a superficial vivacity, which seemed to be doing battle all the time with something behind—something which looked out of her hard, bright eyes, eager and insistent.

Julian Romayne was a tall, well-made young man—taller by a head than the mother smiling up at him; he was well developed for his twenty-three years, slight and athletic-looking, and carrying himself more gracefully than most young Englishmen. But except in this particular, and in a slight tendency towards the use of more gesture than is common in England, his foreign training was in no wise perceptible in his appearance. The first impression he made on people who knew them both was that he was exactly like his mother, and that his mother’s features touched into manliness were a very desirable inheritance for her son; for he was distinctly good-looking. But as a matter of fact, only the upper part of his face, and his colouring, were Mrs. Romayne’s. He had the fair hair which had been hers eighteen years ago; he had her blue eyes and her pale complexion, and his nose and the shape of his brow were hers. But his mouth was larger and rather fuller-lipped than his mother’s, and the line of the chin and jaw was totally different. No strongly-marked characteristics, either intellectual or moral, were to be read in his face; his expression was simply bright and good-tempered with the good temper which has never been tried, and is the result rather of circumstances than of principle.

That strange something in Mrs. Romayne’s face seemed to retreat into the depths from which it had come as she looked at him. She finished her inspection with a gay tirade against the coat which he was wearing, and Julian replied with a boyish laugh.

“I knew you’d be down upon it!” he said. “I say, does it look so very bad? I’ll get a new fit out to-morrow—two or three, in fact! Mother, what an awfully pretty little drawing-room! What an awfully clever little mother you are!”

He flung his arm round her again with the careless, affectionate demonstrativeness which her manner seemed to produce in him, and looked round the room with admiring eyes. They were the eyes of a young man who knew better than some men twice his age how a room should look, and whose appreciation was better worth having than it seemed.

“You’re quite ready for me, you see!” he declared delightedly. “What did you mean, I should like to know, by wanting to keep me away for another fortnight?”

There was a moment’s pause before Mrs. Romayne spoke. She looked up into his face with a rather strange expression in her eyes, and then looked away across the room to where a little pile of accepted invitations lay on her writing-table. That curious light at once of battle and of triumph was strong upon her face as it had not been yet.

“Yes,” she said at last, and there was an unusual ring about her voice. “I am quite ready for you!”

Something more than the furnishing of a house had gone to the preparation of a place in society for the widow and son of William Romayne, and only the woman who had effected that preparation knew how, and how completely it had been achieved.

A moment later Mrs. Romayne’s face had changed again, and she was laughing lightly at Julian’s comments as she disengaged herself from his hold, and went towards the bell.

“Foolish boy!” she said as she rang. “I’m glad you think it’s nice. We’ll have some tea.”

She had just poured him out a cup of tea, and quick, easy question and answer as to his crossing were passing between them, when the front-door bell rang, and she broke off suddenly in her speech.

“Who can that be?” she said. “Hardly a caller; it must be six o’clock! Now, I wonder whether, if it should be a caller, Dawson will have the sense to say not at home? Perhaps I had better——” she rose as she spoke, and moved quickly across the room to the door. But she was too late! As she opened the drawing-room door she heard the street door open below, and heard the words, “At home, ma’am.” With the softest possible ejaculation of annoyance she closed the door stealthily.

“Such a nuisance!” she said rapidly. “What a time to call! I trust they won’t——” And thereupon her face changed suddenly and completely into her usual society smile as the door opened again, and she rose to receive her visitors. “My dear Mrs. Halse!” she exclaimed, “why, what a delightful surprise! Now, don’t say that you have come to tell me that anything has gone wrong about the bazaar?” she continued agitatedly. “Don’t tell me that, Miss Pomeroy!”

She was shaking hands with her younger visitor as she spoke, a girl of apparently about twenty, very correctly dressed, as pretty as a girl can be with neither colour, expression, nor startlingly correct features, whose eyes are for the most part fastened on the ground. She was Mrs. Pomeroy’s only child. She did not deal Mrs. Romayne the blow which the latter appeared to anticipate, but reassured her in a neatly constructed sentence uttered in a rather demure but perfectly self-possessed voice.

Mrs. Halse had been prevented for the moment from monopolising the conversation by reason of her keen interest in the good-looking young man standing by the fireplace; but Miss Pomeroy’s words were hardly uttered before she turned excitedly to Mrs. Romayne. If she was going to make a mistake the disagreeables of the position would be with her hostess, she had decided.

“It’s your son, Mrs. Romayne?” she cried. “It must be, surely! Such a wonderful likeness! Only, really, I can hardly believe that your son—I was ridiculous enough to expect quite a boy! Oh, don’t say that he has just arrived and we are interrupting your first tÊte-À-tÊte! How truly frightful! Let me tell you this moment what I came for and fly!”

Mrs. Romayne answered her with a suave smile.

“I am going to introduce my boy first, if you don’t mind,” she said, and then as Julian, in obedience to her look, came forward, with the easy alacrity of a young man whose social instincts are of the highly civilised kind, she laid her hand on his arm with an artificial air of affectionate pride, and continued lightly: “Your first London introduction, Julian. Mrs. Ralph Halse, Miss Pomeroy! He has only just arrived, as you guessed,” she added in an aside to Mrs. Halse, “and no doubt he is furiously angry with me for allowing him to be caught with the dust of his journey on him.”

But Julian’s anger was not perceptible in his face, or in his manner, which was very pleasant and ready. Even after he had handed tea and cake and subsided into conversation with Miss Pomeroy, Mrs. Halse found it difficult to concentrate herself on the business which had brought her to Chelsea. Her speech to Mrs. Romayne, as to the brilliant idea which had struck her just after the committee broke up, was as voluble as usual, certainly, but less connected than it might have been.

“That’s all right, then. Such a weight off my mind!” she said, as she copied an address into her note-book with a circumstance and importance which would have befitted the settlement of the fate of nations. “It is so important to get things settled at once, don’t you think so? The moment it occurred to me I saw how important it was that there should not be a moment’s delay, and I said to Maud Pomeroy: ‘Let us go at once to Mrs. Romayne, and she will give us the address, and then dear Mrs. Pomeroy can write the letter to-night.’” Here Mrs. Halse’s breath gave out for the moment, and she let her eyes, which had strayed constantly in the direction of Julian and Miss Pomeroy, rest on the young man’s good-looking, well-bred face. “We must have your son among the stewards, Mrs. Romayne,” she said. “So important! Now, I wonder whether it has occurred to you, as it has occurred to me, that a man or two—just a man or two”—with an impressive emphasis on the last word, as though three men would be altogether beside the mark—“would be rather an advantage on the ladies’ committee? Now, what is your opinion, Mr. Romayne? Don’t you think you could be very useful to us?”

She turned towards Julian as she spoke, quite regardless of the fact that Miss Pomeroy’s correctly modulated little voice was stopped by her tones; and Mrs. Romayne turned towards him also. He and Miss Pomeroy were sitting together on the other side of the room, and as her eye fell upon the pair, a curious little flash, as of an idea or a revelation, leaped for an instant into Mrs. Romayne’s eye.

Julian moved and transferred his attention to Mrs. Halse, with an easy courtesy which was a curiously natural reproduction of his mother’s more artificial manner, and which was at the same time very young and unassuming. He laughed lightly.

“I shall be delighted to be a steward,” he said, “or to be useful in any way. But the idea of a ladies’ committee is awe-inspiring.”

“You would make great fun of us at your horrid clubs, no doubt,” retorted Mrs. Halse. “Oh, I know what you young men are! But you can be rather useful in these cases sometimes, though, of course, it doesn’t do to tell you so.”

She laughed loudly, and then rose with a sudden access of haste.

“We must really go!” she said. “Maud”—Mrs. Halse had innumerable girl friends, all of whom she was wont to address by their Christian names—“Maud, we are behaving abominably. We mustn’t stay another moment, not another second.”

But they did stay a great many other seconds, while Mrs. Halse pressed Julian into the service of the bazaar in all sorts and kinds of capacities, and managed to find out a great deal about his past life in the process. When at last she swooped down upon Maud Pomeroy, metaphorically speaking, as though that eminently decorous young lady had been responsible for the delay, and carried her off in a very tornado of protestation, attended to the front door, as in courtesy bound, by Julian, Mrs. Romayne, left alone in the drawing-room, let her face relax suddenly from its responsive brightness into an unmistakeable expression of feminine irritation and dislike.

“Horrid woman!” she said to herself. “Patronises me! Well, she will talk about nothing but Julian all this evening, wherever she may be—and she goes everywhere—so perhaps it has been worth while to endure her.” Then, as Julian appeared again, she said gaily: “My dear boy, they’ve been here an hour, and we shall both be late for dinner! Be off with you and dress!”

It was a very cosy little dinner that followed. Mrs. Romayne, as carefully dressed for her son as she could have been for the most critical stranger, was also at her brightest and most responsive. They talked for the most part of people and their doings; society gossip. Mrs. Romayne told Julian all about Mrs. Halse’s bazaar; deriding the whole affair as an excuse for deriding its promoter, but with no realisation of its innate absurdity; and giving Julian to understand, at the same time, that it was “the thing” to be in it; an idea which he was evidently quite capable of appreciating. Dinner over, she drew his arm playfully through hers and took him all over the house.

“Let me see that you approve!” she said with a laughing assumption of burlesque suspense.

The last room into which she took him was the little room at the back of the dining-room; and as his previous tone of appreciation and pleasure developed into genuine boyish exclamations of delight at the sight of it, the instant’s intense satisfaction in her face struck oddly on her manner.

“You like it, my lord?” she said. “My disgraceful extravagance is rewarded by your gracious approval? Then your ridiculous mother is silly enough to be pleased.” She gave him a little careless touch, half shake and half caress, and Julian threw his arm round her rapturously.

“I should think I did like it!” he said boyishly. “I say, shan’t I have to work hard here! Mother, what an awfully jolly smoking table!”

“Suppose you smoke here now,” suggested Mrs. Romayne, “by way of taking possession? Oh, yes! I’ll stay with you.”

She sat down, as she spoke, in one of the low basket-chairs by the fire, taking a little hand-screen from the mantelpiece as she did so. And Julian, with an exclamation of supreme satisfaction, threw himself into a long lounging-chair with an air of general proprietorship which sat oddly on his youthful figure; and proceeded to select and light a cigar.

A silence followed—rather a long silence. Julian lay back in his chair, and smoked in luxurious contentment. Mrs. Romayne sat with her dainty head, with its elaborate arrangement of red-brown hair, resting against a cushion, her face half hidden by the shade thrown by the fire-screen as she held it up in one slender, ringed hand. She seemed to be looking straight into the fire; as a matter of fact her eyes were fixed on the boyish face beside her. She was the first to break silence.

“It is two, nearly three, months since we were together,” she said.

The words might have been the merest comment in themselves; but there was something in the bright tone in which they were spoken, something—half suggestion, half invitation—which implied a desire to make them the opening of a conversation. Julian Romayne’s perceptions, however, were by no means of the acutest, and he detected no undertone.

“So it is!” he assented, with dreamy cheerfulness.

“How long did you spend in Cairo?”

The question, which came after a pause, was evidently another attempt on a new line. Again it failed.

“Didn’t I tell you? Ten days!” said Julian lazily.

Mrs. Romayne changed her position. She leant forward, her elbow on her knee, her cheek resting on her hand, the screen still shading her face.

“The catechism is going to begin,” she said gaily.

Julian’s cigar was finished. He roused himself, and dropped the end into the ash-tray by his side as he said with a smile:

“What catechism?”

“Your catechism, sir,” returned his mother. “Do you suppose I am going to let you off without insisting on a full and particular account of all your doings during the last ten weeks?”

“A full and particular account of all my doings!” he said. “I say, that sounds formidable, doesn’t it? The only thing is, you’ve had it in my letters.”

“The fullest and most particular?” she laughed.

“The fullest and most particular!”

“Never mind,” she exclaimed, leaning back in her chair again with a restless movement, “I shall catechise all the same. My curiosity knows no limits, you see. Now, you are on your honour as a—as a spoilt boy, understand.”

“On my honour as a spoilt boy! All right. Fire away, mum!”

He pulled himself up, folding his hands with an assumption of “good little boy” demeanour, and laughing into her face. She also drew herself up, and laughed back at him.

“Question one: Have you lost your heart to any pretty girl in the past ten weeks?”

“No, mum.”

“Question two: Have you flirted—much—with any girl, pretty or plain?”

“No, mum.”

“Have you overdrawn your allowance?”

“No, mum. I’ve got such a jolly generous mother, mum!”

“Have you—— Oh! Have you any secrets from your mother?”

The question broke from her in a kind of cry, but she turned it before it was finished into burlesque, and Julian burst into a shout of laughter.

“Not a solitary secret! There, will that do?”

She was looking straight into his face—her own still in shadow—and there was a moment’s pause; almost a breathless pause on her part it seemed; then she broke into a laugh.

“That will do capitally,” she said. “The catechism is over.”

She rose as she spoke, and added a word or two about a note she had to write.

“We may as well go up into the drawing-room if you have finished smoking,” she said. “It is an invitation from some friends of the Pomeroys—a dinner. By-the-bye, don’t you think Miss Pomeroy a very pretty girl?”

Julian’s response was rather languid, but his mother did not press the point. She turned away to replace the screen on the mantelpiece, and as she did so a thought seemed to strike her.

“Oh, Julian!” she said. “Did you go to Alexandria? What about those curtains you were to get me?”

Her back was towards Julian, and she did not notice the instant’s hesitation which preceded his reply. He was putting his cigar-case into his pocket, and the process seemed to demand all his attention.

“I didn’t go to Alexandria, unfortunately,” he said lightly. “The Fosters had been there, and didn’t care to go again.”

The clock struck twelve that night when Mrs. Romayne rose at last from the chair in front of her bedroom fireplace in which she had been sitting for more than an hour. The fire had gone out before her eyes unnoticed, and she shivered a little as she rose. Her face was strangely pale and haggard-looking, and the red-brown hair harmonised ill with the anxiety of its look.

“It begins from to-night!” she said to herself. “It is his man’s life that begins from to-night!”