The slight alteration in Julian of which Marston Loring was conscious, and a subtly evinced consequence of that alteration—namely, that intimacy with the son no longer involved of necessity even an introduction, far less intimacy, at the mother’s house—had no effect whatever upon Loring’s relation with Mrs. Romayne, unless, indeed, it might be said to emphasize his position as friend of the house. During the three weeks which followed immediately upon his first call after his return to town, he saw at least as much of Mrs. Romayne as he had done in the course of any previous three weeks since Julian’s first introduction of him; though the young man was no longer an obvious and tangible link between them. He dined in Queen Anne Street a few days after his return, but except on that occasion it chanced that he hardly ever met Mrs. Romayne and Julian together. He met the latter often enough at one or other of the clubs, or about town. On the former he called, as in duty bound, after the dinner, and again and yet again at short intervals. She had consulted him about a purchase of old oak, with which she wished to surprise Julian, and the purchase seemed to necessitate in his eyes frequent consultation. He also happened to meet her once or twice when she herself was paying calls.

She was always, apparently, pleased to see him. More pronounced, perhaps, when she met him among other people than when she received him alone, but still always more or less present, there was a certain eager, unconscious assertion of something like intimacy with him about her manner. Marston Loring was quick to observe the new note, and he prided himself likewise on the caution with which he refused to allow it even the value he believed it to possess. He caught her quick recognition of his presence; her tendency to draw him always into the conversation in which she happened to be engaged; the tacit assumption of mutual interests and understanding lurking in her voice; and he sifted and dismissed these things, cynically, as probably meaningless. But astute as he was, he never thought of them in connection with the constant references to Julian; the questions as to Julian’s doings; with which her conversations with him were full. Of these latter he took hardly any account—except for an occasional sardonic smile. Clever as he thought himself, there were vast tracts of human nature to which he had no clue, in the very existence of which he disbelieved; consequently, it was not surprising that he should now and then mistake cause for effect.

At about noon on a bright, cold October day he got out of a hansom at twenty-two, Queen Anne Street, with a certain cynical expectancy on his face. The weeks which had passed since Mrs. Romayne and Julian returned to town on that close September day had brought on winter, and had settled winter society fairly into its grooves; and on the previous evening Marston Loring and Mrs. Romayne had met at a dinner-party. Mrs. Romayne had been alone. To enquiries made for her son, and regrets at his absence, she had replied, with a gaiety which became absolutely feverish as the evening wore on, that he was unfortunately engaged. Throughout the evening, as though some kind of strain were acting upon her self-control, all the characteristics of her demeanour towards Loring had been slightly exaggerated. Loring had detected, before he had exchanged two sentences with her, that she was not herself; that she was unstrung and nervous; and arguing on totally false premises he had come to a totally false conclusion. She had pressed him restlessly about the commission he was doing for her, and he had twisted it this morning into an excuse for coming to see her when he knew she would be at home.

“It is an unheard-of hour, I know,” he said, as she rose to receive him with an exclamation of surprise. “But I want a little more detail, and one or two measurements, before I can execute your orders satisfactorily.”

He had seen before she spoke that the weakness of the night before, from whatever cause it had arisen, had passed away; the lines about her face were set into a determined, uncompromising cheerfulness, and her voice as she spoke conveyed the same impression.

“It is more than kind of you, and I am very glad to see you,” she said. “I’m always glad to see Julian’s friend, you know.” The last words with a laugh. “You don’t happen to have met him this morning, I suppose?”

Loring signified, without a hint of sarcasm, that it was more common not to meet the man one would wish to meet in the Temple than to meet him, and Mrs. Romayne laughed again.

“I know,” she said. “But one gets an absurd impression that men doing the same thing in the same place must be always coming across one another. It’s very ridiculous, of course. You and he have always had a knack of finding one another out, though. I suppose you are quite one another’s greatest chums, aren’t you? Is ‘chum’ still the word, by-the-bye?”

“I believe so,” returned Loring carelessly. “Yes,” he continued in a different tone, “I don’t know when I’ve taken to any one as I took to Julian.”

There was a little gesture, half-mocking, half involuntary, which accepted the words as a personal compliment, and Mrs. Romayne said with a smile:

“You are a curious pair of friends, too, are you not? Julian”—her voice in uttering the name seemed to have acquired a new tenderness in the past month, and lingered over it now, evidently unconsciously and involuntarily—“Julian is such a boy, and you are—a great deal older than you ought to be.”

She shook her head at him with a reproving laugh, and he answered in his most blasÉ manner:

“I’m a man of the world, you see. I knew it all through and through before Julian had left school. I hope you wouldn’t have preferred another boy for his ‘chum’!”

There was a daring and a challenge in his tone which made the question personal rather to himself than to Julian; but Mrs. Romayne took it from the other point of view.

“Quite the contrary!” she said quickly. “Another boy would not have been at all the thing for him. I am delighted to think that his mentor is a wise one. I rely on you, Mr. Loring, do you know!”

She stopped abruptly. The last words, uttered suddenly and involuntarily, had seemed curiously charged with a meaning which could not get itself expressed. She paused an instant and then, half as though she wished to laugh some impression away, half as though she wished the words to have significance, she added:

“You’ll remember that, won’t you? Shall we go down and see about the fittings?”

She rose as she spoke and led the way down to Julian’s room. The room was already as perfect as might be. Only a great restlessness, an irrepressible and incessant impulse to give pleasure to its occupant, could have dictated further improvements; and as Mrs. Romayne talked and explained, the same restless instinct of service expressed itself in sundry little involuntary touches to trifles about the room—about Julian’s chair and his writing-table.

The door-bell rang at length, and her face, over which that new and weaker expression had stolen, hardened suddenly.

“I’m afraid I must send you away now!” she said, turning to Loring. “I’ve made an appointment for this morning to get through some bothering business. You understand now just what I want, though, don’t you?”

“I think so!” answered Loring reflectively. It would have been strange indeed if he had not understood by this time. “But I’m sorry I must go!”

“I’m sorry too!” said Mrs. Romayne lightly. “I hate business, and it loses none of its solemnity, I can assure you, when it is transacted by my connexion, Dennis Falconer. He is my trustee, you know!”

Loring smiled. He did not detect anything behind her words, and it struck him always as perfectly natural that Mrs. Romayne and her “connexion” should be somewhat antagonistic. “I should imagine he would be a rather ponderous man of business!” he said.

The parlour-maid entered at this moment to announce that Mr. Dennis Falconer was in the drawing-room, and as they left the room Mrs. Romayne turned again to Loring.

“To tell you the truth I find him rather ponderous at all times!” she said with a laugh. “Didn’t you say once that altitudes were oppressive? Well, I must go and be oppressed!”

She held out her hand as she spoke, and then paused.

“Oh, by-the-bye,” she said, “Julian wants you to come and dine one day next week—only he’s so much engaged. Which day will suit you?”

“Thanks!” answered Loring. “I shall be charmed!” His face was quite impassive as he spoke, but he was wondering nevertheless whether Julian had as yet heard of the invitation. From what he had observed lately, he fancied that Julian had reasons of his own for avoiding home engagements. “I am engaged on Tuesday and Thursday,” he continued, “but on any other day I shall be delighted. Did Julian have a successful evening yesterday?”

Mrs. Romayne had explained to him on the previous night with forced merriment that her son was “dining with a fellow, he says!”

“Yes, I think so!” she answered lightly. “I don’t know which ‘fellow’ it was, you know. Well, then, I will send you a note.”

They had moved out into the hall as they talked, and now as she paused at the foot of the stairs he shook hands again, and went out of the house as she turned and went up to the drawing-room. Dennis Falconer was standing waiting by the fire.

“Most punctual of men!” she said airily as they shook hands. “How do you do?”

Dennis Falconer had by this time had five months of inaction and ill-health, and the fact that he was heartily weary of both by no means served to soften the natural tendency of his manner towards reserve and severity. In settling down to London life for the winter, too, the fact that he was no longer a new lion gave an added tinge of monotony to existence for him, honestly unconscious as he was of this truth. The days went very heavily with him; he was conscious of having come to a dreary bit of his life’s journey, and he endured it conscientiously—if with rather self-conscious self-respect. An added gravity and silence seemed to him under the circumstances by no means to be deprecated.

Under these circumstances the contrast between him and Mrs. Romayne as they exchanged the trivialities of the situation was inexpressible, and it was not surprising that they touched almost instantly upon the business which was the cause of their interview. It was not a long affair; it turned upon Mrs. Romayne’s desire to have rather more ready money at her command; and Dennis Falconer, having explained the situation to her; having stated his views, evidently conscientiously compelled thereto; and having entered a formal protest against her instructions; returned to his pocket the notebook to which he had been referring as if to emphasize the close of the matter. Then he paused.

Mrs. Romayne had drawn a quick, slight breath of relief at his action, but the breath seemed to suspend itself for an instant on this pause, and the eyes with which she watched his were very bright and intent.

“As your only near relative,” he began with formal gravity, “and as your son’s only near relative, I feel myself bound to take this opportunity of approaching a subject which has been in my thoughts for some time. Any man of ordinary knowledge and experience of the world, having regard only to the most ordinary circumstances, would tell you that so large an allowance as you make your son is not an advisable thing for any young man.”

Mrs. Romayne had listened with her expression veiled and repressed into an intent vigilance, and as he finished a dull flush—which was none the less hot and significant because it had not the vivid intensity of the angry flush of youth—crept into her face, and her eyes glittered. Her tone as she spoke witnessed to a strong self-control, and an intense determination not to abandon her position or to lessen by one jot the distance she had set between them.

“I am sorry you think so!” she said carelessly.

“I think so, emphatically,” he returned. “I should think so for any young man. For William Romayne’s son——”

Mrs. Romayne had been gathering up some papers from the table with light, careless movements; she rose now rather suddenly but still carelessly. What seemed to him almost shameful callousness quickened Falconer into what he thought a righteous disregard for all conventionality.

He too rose, but his movement was no response to hers; rather it seemed to crush and dominate its suggestion of easy dismissal with the implacable austerity of a reality not to be put aside. He stood looking at her, forcing her, by the suddenly asserted superiority of his man’s determination and mental weight, to meet his grave, condemning eyes.

“Does your son know what his father was?” he said in a low, stern voice.

He had forced down the barrier, he had annihilated the distance, and she faced him with glittering eyes, that dull flush all over her face, its mask gone.

“No!” she said, and from her hard, defiant voice, also, all artificiality had dropped away.

“He knows nothing of his danger; he has no safeguards, and he has money at his command which would be temptation to any young man. Think what you are doing!”

For a couple of seconds they confronted one another, separated by no conventionalities, man and woman, with the common memory of a common horror between them, holding them together in spite of every obstacle which temperament and habit, mental and moral, could interpose.

Then with a tremendous effort the woman’s strength reasserted itself, and by sheer force of her will she thrust away the horrible reality which he had forced upon her. She laughed.

“I really don’t know what we are talking about!” she said. “I am sure you mean most kindly as to my spoilt boy’s allowance, but we won’t trouble to discuss it! So good of you to take the trouble to think of it—and so unnecessary!”

For a moment Falconer gazed at her almost petrified with amazement and disgust. His perceptive and imaginative faculties had not developed with the passing of years; his mental processes were slow; and for all their ghastly exaggeration he accepted the careless, shallow artificiality of her tone and manner, and the smiling unfeelingness of the rebuff she had given him, exactly as they appeared upon the surface. It was some seconds, even, before he thoroughly realised how ruthlessly and completely she had imputed to him all the attributes of a meddler; and as he did so an added distance touched the uncompromising sternness which had gradually settled down upon his face.

“I beg your pardon!” he said, and the formal, unmeaning words seemed, in their enforced condescension to her level, to carry with them a lofty condemnation which was even contempt. “Good day!” he added stiffly; and then, not seeing, apparently, the hand she extended to him with a hard, smiling “Good-bye,” he left the room.

Mrs. Romayne’s face remained curiously blanched-looking all the afternoon, as though she had received some kind of shock. She spent the afternoon in paying calls, and whenever she returned alone to her carriage there crept back into her eyes—bright and eager as she talked and laughed—a certain haunting questioning, not to be driven quite away by any simulation of gaiety.

As her afternoon’s work drew to a close, her eyes were no longer quite free from it, even as she made her attractive conversation, and when she rose to bring her last visit to an end she was looking very tired. She was just shaking hands with her hostess when Mrs. Halse was announced.

To spare herself one iota of what she considered her social duty—even when that duty took the form of civility to a woman she disliked—was not Mrs. Romayne’s way. With exactly the exclamation of pleasure and surprise which the situation demanded she waited, pleasantly desirous of exchanging greetings with the new-comer, while Mrs. Halse bore down vociferously upon the mistress of the house. Mrs. Halse had only very recently returned to town, and there was all the excitement of novelty about her appearance. She was a good deal louder even than usual, partly as the result of this excitement, and partly as the result of absence from town; and she had also grown considerably stouter. Announcements of this fact, lamentations, and explanations mingled with her greetings of her hostess, and were still upon her lips when she turned to Mrs. Romayne.

“Abominable, isn’t it?” she said, pouring out her words as fast as they would come, and without waiting for any answers. “Such a trial! I suppose I shall have to go in for Turkish baths or something horrible of that sort. And how is everybody? How is that wicked young man of yours, Mrs. Romayne? I heard of his goings on at the Ponsonbys’! By-the-bye, do tell him that Hilda Newton is engaged to be married. So good for him! No doubt he thinks she is pining away. A very good match, too—young Compton; rich and good-looking; rather a fool, but don’t tell Master Julian that.”

Master Julian’s mother was smiling so charmingly that it was with some difficulty that Mrs. Halse, who, with the assistance of Miss Newton, had guessed the substance of the conversation which had actually taken place between the mother and son in the railway carriage during their journey from Norfolk, had some slight difficulty in restraining the ejaculation, “Cat!”

“Really!” was the suave answer. “Miss Newton is really engaged, and so well. So glad! Such a charming girl! Yes, I’ll tell Julian, certainly. His heart will be broken—temporarily. Fortunately his fancies are as ephemeral as they are numerous. Good-bye! So glad to have seen you.”

She pressed Mrs. Halse’s hand cordially as she spoke, and pursued her graceful way to the door.

Julian was dining out again that night, and her lonely evening apparently affected his mother’s nerves. At any rate, Julian received a message the next morning—a Sunday—to the effect that she had slept badly and was resting, but would see him at lunch, and at lunch-time accordingly she appeared.

She laughed at his half-careless, half-affectionate enquiries, calling herself quite rested and quite well. And after his first enquiries as to her health, Julian relapsed into rather moody silence—silence with which his mother had apparently nothing to do. That tone of independence which had come to him, and which was sometimes hardly perceptible, could hardly have been more strongly evidenced than by his one or two spasmodic efforts to pass out of his own life—where something was evidently not to his liking—into the life they shared.

Such a state of things is always more or less disturbing to the mental atmosphere; more or less according to the sensitiveness of the person upon whom it acts; and as Mrs. Romayne sat opposite Julian the furtive glances which she cast at his moody, preoccupied face became more and more anxious and restless. A tentative, uncertain tone in her manner of dealing with him, which had developed during the last month, increased moment by moment; and her voice and laugh as she chatted to him—ignoring his indifferent reception of her little bits of news—became moment by moment more forced and unreal. That her nerves and her self-control were not so reliable as they had once been was evident in the fact that she took refuge—as was not unusual with her in these days—in painful exaggeration.

Her bright little flow of talk stopped at last, however; and Julian making no attempt to fill the gap, there was total silence. It was broken again by Mrs. Romayne, and she was talking now, evidently, for talking’s sake, as though she was no longer capable of weighing her words; but, in her intense desire to penetrate the vague atmosphere which she could not challenge, was making her advances blindly.

“I met Mrs. Halse yesterday,” she began gaily. “Did I tell you? Fortunately I only encountered her for a few moments, or I doubt whether I should be alive to tell the tale.”

She paused, and Julian smiled absently. They had finished lunch, and he had risen and strolled to the fire with a cigarette, and he was thinking vaguely, as her voice broke in upon his meditations—or perhaps rather feeling than thinking—that his mother was rather artificial. All society women were artificial, he had thought once or twice lately; and the word was acquiring a new significance to him.

“She bestowed an immense amount of conversation upon me in the course of those few minutes!” continued Mrs. Romayne in the sprightly tone which her son was beginning to hear for the first time as something jarring. “Amongst other things she told me a little piece of news which will interest you.”

“Yes?” said Julian indifferently.

A fellow didn’t always want to be entertained, he was saying to himself irritably; it was a nuisance. His thoughts had wandered completely, and he was going over a fruitless hour which he had spent alone walking up and down a certain side-street off Piccadilly, on the previous evening—an hour which was accountable for his gloomy humour this morning—when he became aware of his mother’s voice saying with insistent gaiety:

“Well, sir, aren’t you broken-hearted?”

Julian started and made a futile effort to realise what his mother had said. The necessity for the effort and its failure proved by no means soothing to him, and he said rather impatiently:

“I’m awfully sorry, mother, but I’m afraid I didn’t hear.”

“He didn’t hear!” echoed Mrs. Romayne in mock appeal to heaven and earth to witness the fact. She, too, had made an effort and a failure, and the result with her was to increase her nervous recklessness. “Five weeks ago he was ready to eat his poor little mother because she prevented his proposing to this young woman, and now when I tell him she’s engaged he doesn’t even hear! Perhaps you’ve forgotten Hilda Newton’s very existence, my lord! Who is her successor?”

Julian flushed angrily, and his good-looking face took a sullen expression.

“She’s not likely to have a successor, as you call it,” he said. “A fellow doesn’t care to have that kind of thing happen twice.”

His mother broke into a thin, nervous laugh.

“You don’t mean to say it rankles still!” she said gaily. “Is this the reason of your devotion to work and ‘fellows’? You silly old boy, you ought to be thoroughly glad of your escape by this time! I think I shall follow Dennis Falconer’s advice, and cut down your allowance to teach you reason. Shall I?”

The jest, dragged in as it was, had a forced ring about it; perhaps it bore all-unconscious testimony to the oppressively insistent power of that haunting questioning of yesterday. But Julian, knowing nothing of this, was simply conscious of ever-increasing irritation from her voice and manner.

“I don’t see what business my allowance is of Dennis Falconer’s!” he said gruffly. And then side by side with his growing sense of his mother’s artificiality, there grew in him an overmastering desire for another woman’s presence—a simple presence, to which social subtleties and affectation were unknown. Why hadn’t Clemence met him yesterday evening? How could he tell when he would see her again? To-morrow he could not meet her. Then his reflections paused, as it were, absorbed in a vague sense of discomfort and discontent, until a fresh thought stole across them; a thought which presented itself by no means for the first time that day.

Why should he not go and see her this afternoon? After all, why should he not? He never had done such a thing, but—did it mean so much as it seemed to mean? And if it did? Why not?

“I don’t see either,” his mother said; and Julian smiled grimly as he thought how little she knew the question she was answering. “It’s our business, isn’t it? And it’s my private business to find you a nice wife—not yours at all, you understand.” These last words with a laugh. “She must be pretty, I suppose—good style at any rate—and she must be rich, and she must have the makings of a good hostess in her. Really, I think I must begin to look her out. Don’t you think——”

Julian interrupted her. He was hardly conscious that he was doing so; he had hardly heard her words; but the atmosphere of the perfectly appointed room, with its artificial mistress, had suddenly become absolutely intolerable to him, and he had answered his own question suddenly and recklessly.

“I’m going out, mother,” he said. “I’ve got some calls to make, and it’s getting late. You won’t go out this afternoon, I know. Good-bye.”

He was gone almost before she had realised that he was going.

To Mrs. Romayne it was a repetition of their first evening at home together in the autumn. The nervous excitement under which she had been acting died suddenly away, and she realised what had happened; realised it, and sat for a moment staring at it, as it were, her hands clenched on the tablecloth, her face haggard and drawn.

To Julian it was no repetition. It was a new departure, sudden and unpremeditated, and as he walked away from his mother’s house his face was alight and eager with excitement and determination.