The stall-holders presented a singularly fresh and unworn appearance, considering how much they had undergone, as they gradually put in an appearance at their stall on the following day, and gathered together in little knots to compare notes as to their sufferings, and here and there to allude incidentally to their takings—which certainly seemed disproportionate to the exertions of which they were the result. The fancy dress idea on which Mrs. Halse’s whole soul had been set in March had been abandoned when Mrs. Halse found a fresh hobby in April; and each lady wore that variety of the fashion of the day which seemed most desirable in her eyes. All the dresses were very “smart,” and as their wearers moved about, visiting one another’s stalls, exchanging greetings, and inspecting one another’s wares with critical eyes, they showed to conspicuous advantage. For, during the first hour at least, the stall-holders and their satellites, male and female—a mere handful of people in the great hall—had the entire place with all its decorations to themselves.

It was the cheap day, however, and as the afternoon wore on the hall gradually filled with that curious class of person which is always craving for any link, however “sham,” with the fashionable world, and makes it a point of self-respect to attend all public functions in which “society” chances to be engaged. These far-off votaries of fashion walked about, looking not at the stalls, but at the ladies in attendance on them, turning away as a rule in stolid silence when invited in mellifluous tones to buy; or perhaps investing a shilling when long search had resulted in the discovery of a twopenny article to be had for that sum, for the sake of making a purchase from one of the leaders of fashion; some of them, with a vague notion that it was fashionable to “know every one,” kept up a great show of talk and laughter, and were constantly seeing acquaintances on the other side of the hall—with whom they never by any chance came in contact. But no one spent more than five shillings, and the stall-holders began to find the position pall.

“I call this deadly!” said Mrs. Halse, subsiding into a chair, and looking up pathetically at Julian Romayne, who stood by. Julian should have been in attendance at the stall next but one, where Mrs. Pomeroy and his mother reigned, but Mrs. Halse, in view of the exertions before her, had summoned to her aid, about a week before, Miss Hilda Newton; and Miss Hilda Newton was looking irresistibly bewitching to-day in a big yellow hat. Her spirits, also, bore the strain of the proceedings better than did those of the other young ladies.

“Suppose we pick out some things—cheap things”—with a little grimace—“and go about among the people and try and sell them,” she said now adventurously, looking up into Julian’s face, with her pretty black eyes dancing. “I’ve done it heaps of times at bazaars, and it always goes well. Let us try, Mr. Romayne.”

Mr. Romayne was by no means loath, and a few minutes later his mother, whose eyes had been covering Mrs. Halse’s stall all the time she tried to persuade into a purchase a sharp-faced girl, whose sole object was a sufficiently prolonged inspection of Mrs. Romayne’s dress to enable her to find out how “that body was made,” saw them sally forth together laughing and talking in low, confidential tones. Her lips tightened slightly; the reappearance of Miss Newton had found Mrs. Romayne’s dislike to the pretty, opinionated, self-reliant girl as active and apparently unreasoning as it had been on her previous visit.

“What a very good idea!” she said now suavely, turning to Mrs. Pomeroy who sat by, a picture of placid content, and indicating the adventurous pair as they disappeared among the people. “We must try something of the sort, I think. Maud, dear”—Miss Pomeroy had recently become Maud to Mrs. Romayne—“do you see? I really think something might be done in that way.”

Miss Pomeroy, who was standing in front of the stall, a charming and apparently quite inanimate figure in white, assented demurely, and Mrs. Romayne, looking round for a man, caught the eye of Loring. He came to her instantly.

“You’ll do capitally,” she said brightly, and Miss Pomeroy, making no objection to the proceeding, was started forth with Loring, the latter carrying a small stock-in-trade, to emulate Miss Newton and Julian. That stock-in-trade was quite untouched, however, when about a quarter of an hour later they returned to the stall a little hot and discomfited.

“We haven’t made a success,” said Loring with a rather sardonic smile; “Miss Pomeroy says I’m no good! Now, there’s that fellow Julian doing a roaring trade!”

Julian and Miss Newton, in point of fact, were at that moment visible returning to Mrs. Halse’s stall, evidently in high feather, all their stock sold out. Mrs. Romayne watched Julian counting his gains into Mrs. Halse’s hand, saying laughingly to Loring as she did so:

“You are not boy enough for this kind of thing, I’m afraid!” And then Julian, with a final laughing nod, turned away from Mrs. Halse, and came hastily towards his mother’s stall.

“That’s right!” said Mrs. Romayne gaily, ignoring the fact that he had evidently not come to stay. “I was just wanting you, sir, to go round with Miss Pomeroy, if she will kindly go with you, and get rid of some of our odds and ends!”

Julian stopped short and flushed a little.

“I’m awfully sorry!” he said. “I’ll come back and do it with pleasure! But I have just promised to go round again with Miss Newton. I came to see if you could give us some change.”

His mother supplied his wants smilingly, and he was gone. She had turned away with rather compressed lips when a voice behind her said half hesitatingly, half gushingly, and with a strong German accent:

“We are surely unmistaken! It is—yes, it must be, the much-honoured Mrs. Romayne!”

Mrs. Romayne turned quickly and gazed at the speaker obviously unrecognisingly. Nor did the two figures with whom she was confronted look in the least like acquaintances of hers. They were young women of the plainest and most angular German type, shabbily dressed according to the canons of middle-class German taste.

“She remembers us not, Gretchen!” began the younger of the two. And then a sudden light of recollection broke over Mrs. Romayne. They were two girls who had been training for a musical career at Leipsic, whom it had been the fashion to patronise; they had not developed as had been expected, however, and she had entirely forgotten their existence.

“FrÄulein Schmitz!” she said now with distant brightness. “Ah, of course! How stupid of me! How do you do?”

They were very loquacious. Mrs. Romayne had heard all about their careers; all the reasons that had led to their spending a fortnight in London; and was beginning to think that the moment had come for getting rid of them, when, having exhausted themselves in compliments on her appearance, they enquired after Julian.

“Though we have seen Mr. Romayne,” said the elder, “since, ah, but much since we had the pleasure to see his mother. It was in Alexandria in the winter past—we hoped that some concerts there might be possible, but there is so much jealousy and favouritism—it was in Alexandria that we met him. He was travelling in Egypt, he told to us.”

“Yes!” said Mrs. Romayne, smothering a yawn. “He was in Egypt——” she stopped suddenly, and her eyes seemed to contract strangely. “Where did you say you saw him?” she said.

“It was in Alexandria! He was there for the day only, and he was to us most kind. He arrived in the morning early by the same train, and he showed us much until at night he left.”

“At Alexandria?”

“Surely! At Alexandria!”

“You must have made a mistake. It was some other place.”

Mrs. Romayne’s tone was curiously unlike that in which she had conducted the early part of the conversation. It was sharp and direct. FrÄulein Schmitz seemed to notice and resent the change.

“But we have not made a mistake, I must assure you!” she said stiffly. “It was at Alexandria. We saw him go away in the train.”

There was a moment’s pause. Mrs. Romayne was looking straight before her with those strangely contracted eyes; her lips a thin, pale line. The sisters waited a moment, evidently affronted. Then, finding that Mrs. Romayne took no notice whatever of them, they exchanged resentful glances, and the elder spoke.

“We will say good-bye!” she said formally. “It is time that we were going!”

Mrs. Romayne seemed to remember their presence—gradually only. Then she said quickly, and in a voice that sounded as though her throat were dry:

“You are going at once? Right out of the hall at once?”

“At once we are going, yes!” was the reply, and with a stiff inclination of their heads they moved away.

Mrs. Romayne followed the two angular forms with her eyes until they reached the entrance and disappeared. Then she swept a quick glance round the hall. Julian was at the further end deeply absorbed in his proceedings with Miss Newton. The FrÄulein Schmitz had evidently been unseen by him.

His mother looked at him for a moment with a strange, fixed gaze, and then she turned her eyes away mechanically, and moved her mouth with a little twitch as though she felt the muscles stiffening and knew that they must not take the lines they would; there was a deadly pallor about her mouth. At that instant Loring came up to her with a witty satirical comment on the scene at which she was apparently gazing, and for the next few minutes she stood there exchanging gay little observations with him, the pallor never altering, her eyes never moving. Then quite suddenly she turned towards him.

“I want some tea!” she said. “Take me to the refreshment place, Mr. Loring!”

Julian was threading his way to where she stood, and though she turned instantly in the direction of the refreshment stall, followed perforce by Loring, she passed close to him. He stopped and said something, but she only nodded to him and went rapidly on.

A great many other stall-holders were recruiting themselves with tea and ices, and they were all more or less in spirits, real or affected, at the approaching prospect of the end of their labours. Mrs. Romayne was instantly hailed as one of a very smart group, and took her place with eager, high-pitched gaiety. She did not go back to her stall, tea being over, but moved about the bazaar, always with a little party in attendance, laughing and talking. She and Julian were dining with a large party of stall-holders at Mrs. Pomeroy’s; they were all to repair thither direct from the bazaar, and Mrs. Romayne took a detachment in her carriage. Only one instant of solitude came to her before the luxurious, hilarious meal; only one instant, when the stream of descending ladies left her behind on an upper landing. In that instant, as if involuntarily and unconsciously to herself, the gaiety fell from her face like a mask, leaving it haggard and ghastly. She put her hand—it was icy cold—up to her head.

“He told me a lie!” she said to herself. “A lie! Oh, my boy!”

She was very bright and witty as she and Julian drove home together, and the greyish whiteness which was stealing over her face was unnoticed by her son’s careless eyes even when they stood in the well-lighted hall.

“Are you going straight up, mother?” he said. “If so, I’ll say good night. I want a cigar.”

She paused a moment and looked at him with that indescribable tenderness which haunted her eyes at times as they rested on him, intensified a thousandfold.

“I’ll come and sit with you for a little while if you will have me,” she said.

She tried evidently for her usual manner, and succeeded inasmuch as Julian noticed nothing beyond. But beneath the surface there was something not wholly to be suppressed—something which looked out of her eyes, trembled in her voice, lingered in her touch as she laid her hand on his arm; something which, taken in conjunction with the shreds of affectation with which she strove to cover it, and with the boy’s profound unconsciousness, was as pathetic as it was beautiful and strange.

She drew him into his own little room, and then with a forced laugh at herself she pushed him gently into a chair, and insisted on waiting upon him—bringing him cigar, matches, ash-tray—anything she could think of to add to his comfort, laughing all the time at him and at herself, and hugging those shreds of affectation close. But there was that about her, if there had been any one to see and understand, which made her one with all the many mothers since the world began who, with their hearts aching and bleeding with impotent pity and love, have tried to find some outlet for their yearning in the strange instinct for service which goes always hand in hand with mother love as with no other love on earth.

She lit his match at last, and then knelt down beside his chair.

“My dearest,” she said, “my dearest, you shall have that two hundred—to-morrow if you like! You did not think me vexed about it, did you? You know I only want you to be happy, Julian, don’t you?”

Julian laid down his cigar with a merry laugh. “I should be a fool if I didn’t!” he answered, patting her hand with boyish affection. “It’s awfully good of you, dear, and I’m frightfully grateful. I won’t make such a fool of myself again.”

Mrs. Romayne put up her hand quickly. “Don’t promise, Julian!” she said in a strange breathless way, “you might—you might forget, you know, and then perhaps you wouldn’t like to tell me! And I want to know! I always want to know!” She stopped abruptly, an almost agonised appeal in her eyes.

She was still kneeling at his side, with her eyes fixed on his face; and suddenly, abruptly, almost as though the words forced themselves from her against her will, she said, with a slight catch in her voice:

“Julian, I met FrÄulein Schmitz to-day!”

He met her eyes for a moment, his own questioning and uncomprehending; then gradually there stole over his face recollection, vague at first, which became as it grew definite rather shamefaced, rather annoyed, and rather amused.

“Oh!” he said; his tone was light and daring enough, though a touch of genuine shame and embarrassment lurked in it. “Oh, I call that hard lines!”

He was smiling daringly into her face with an acceptance of the situation that was perfectly frank. His mother’s hands, as they rested on the arm of his chair, were tightly wrung together, and her eyes never stirred from his face.

“Why?” she said rather hoarsely, “why did you?”

He laughed, shrugging his shoulders and throwing out his hands with a graceful foreign movement.

“I was rather a culprit, you see,” he said. “I only spent those few hours in Alexandria, and I never gave a thought to your commission. And I felt such a brute about it that I wasn’t up to confessing!”

It was the truth and the whole truth, and it conveyed itself as such. Mrs. Romayne knelt there for a moment more, looking into his eyes, her own wide and strained; and then she rose heavily and slowly to her feet. There was a pause.

The silence was broken by Julian, evidently with a view to changing a subject on which he could hardly be said to show to conspicuous advantage.

“You’re going to write to Falconer, I suppose? You wouldn’t like to do it to-night, dear, would you? He would get the letter in better time if it was posted the first thing. You could do it at my table there!”

Mrs. Romayne did not speak. Julian could not see her face.

“Yes!” she said at last, and her voice sounded rather hollow and far away, “I will do it to-night if you like.” She bent down and kissed him. “Good night!” she said.

“Won’t you write here?” said Julian in some surprise.

“No, I’ll go upstairs!” she answered, and went out of the room.

She went upstairs, moving slowly and heavily, straight to her dainty little writing-table, and sat down, drawing out a sheet of paper. She wrote the conventional words of address to Dennis Falconer, and then she stopped suddenly and lifted her face. It was ghastly. The eyes, sunken and dim, seemed to be confronting the very irony of fate.