The clock in Mrs. Romayne’s drawing-room chimed the half-hour—half-past four—and Mrs. Romayne glanced up as she heard it. She was alone, sitting at her writing-table answering invitations. She was looking better than she had looked on the preceding day—less haggard, and physically stronger.

She answered and put aside the last invitation-card, and then she drew out a letter in a straight, clear, girl’s writing. It was signed: “Affectionately yours, Maud Pomeroy,” and it bore reference to Miss Pomeroy’s prospective visit to her. Mrs. Romayne glanced through it, the vigour of her face seeming to accentuate as she did so, and then proceeded to write a few cordial, affectionate lines in answer. She was just directing the envelope when a servant came in with tea.

Mrs. Romayne rose.

“Send these letters to the post,” she said.

She glanced at the clock again as she spoke, and at that moment the front-door bell rang.

Left alone, Mrs. Romayne moved quickly to the looking-glass, and took an anxious, critical look at herself; it was as though she had learnt to distrust her appearance. The inspection, however, proved satisfactory, apparently; and as she turned quickly away as she heard steps upon the stairs, there was a self-dependence and sense of power in the bright, expectant keenness of her eyes.

“Mr. Loring!” announced the servant, and Mr. Loring followed his name into the room.

“I am very glad to see you,” said Mrs. Romayne, advancing to meet him. “This is a much better way of welcoming a friend than our meeting yesterday. I think I shall celebrate the occasion by saying not at home to any one else. Julian will be in, perhaps, and he will like to have you to himself. Not at home, Dawson,” she added in conclusion.

There was a verve and brightness about her manner which was not exactly its usual vivacity, and which faintly suggested the presence of some kind of special excitement in her mind.

Loring’s perceptions were in a state of rather abnormal acuteness; the situation had meanings for him, which had braced up his forces not inconsiderably. He detected that inward excitement about Mrs. Romayne instantly, and he was convinced also, though he could hardly have given a reason for the conviction, that there was not the smallest chance of Julian’s appearance. Both circumstances he reckoned as points in his favour in the game he was going to play.

“It’s very charming of you,” he said. “Do you know this is the first time I have really felt that coming back to London means—something.”

He took the chair she had indicated to him on the other side of the little tea-table as he spoke, and there was nothing lame or unfinished about the words spoken as he spoke them. His eyes were fixed upon Mrs. Romayne, but she was pouring out tea with so intent a look on her face as almost to suggest preoccupation. She did not look up, nor did the tone of his voice reach her, except superficially, apparently, for she replied with a pleasant, friendly laugh.

“I should hope it did mean ‘something,’ indeed,” she said. “Friends should count for ‘something,’ surely, especially when they have really taken the trouble to miss you very much. Have you had such an unusually fascinating time in Africa, then?”

She handed him a cup of tea, and as he rose to take it from her, he answered:

“Well, not exactly that. I’m afraid I don’t believe in fascinating times, you know. Perhaps I am too much of a pessimist.”

He spoke with that tone of personal revelation and confidence which is always more or less attractive to a woman, coming from a man; and Mrs. Romayne responded with the gentle loftiness of sympathy which the position demanded.

“I’ve often been afraid you felt like that,” she said. “And it is really quite wrong of you, don’t you know. You ought to be such a particularly well-satisfied person! I suppose you are horribly ambitious? Now, tell me, has your business gone off as well as you hoped? I have been so interested in your delightful articles!”

“Does anything go off as well as one had hoped?” was the reply, spoken with a cynical smile, indeed, but with a certain daring deprecation of her disapproval, which was not unattractive. “No, I ought not to carp,” he continued quickly. “I have every reason to be satisfied.”

His tone implied considerably more in the way of success and latent possibilities about his present position than the words themselves conveyed; and Mrs. Romayne answered with cordial, delicately-expressed congratulations, which drifted into a species of general questionings as to his doings, less directly personal, but implying that he might count on her sympathy if he chose to confide in her in greater detail. This was no part of Loring’s plan, however. He led by almost imperceptible degrees away from the subject, and before very long they were talking London gossip as though he had never been away, the only perceptible result of his absence evincing itself in the touch of additional intimacy which his return seemed to have given their relations, necessarily at Mrs. Romayne’s instigation.

The talk touched here and there, and by-and-by an enquiry from Loring after a mutual friend elicited a crisper laugh than usual, and an expressive movement of the eyebrows, from Mrs. Romayne.

“Haven’t you heard?” she said. “Oh, it’s an old story now, of course! Well, they don’t come to town this season, I believe. Lady Ashton suffers from—neuralgia!”

She laughed again, and then in response to a cynical and incredulously interrogative ejaculation from Loring, she clasped her hands lightly on her knee and went on with the animation of a woman who has a good story to tell and enjoys telling it.

“She contracted the complaint, they say, in a poky little church in Kensington into which Gladys Ashton strolled one morning and got herself married. Oh, dear no! Her mother wasn’t there! That’s one of the points of the affair. And Lord Rochdale wasn’t there either.”

“Gladys Ashton jilted Rochdale after all!”

“After all!” assented Mrs. Romayne gaily. “After all that poor woman’s trouble, after the quite pathetic way in which she has slaved to catch him, she gets a letter from the ungrateful girl—at an afternoon tea, too, heaps of people there—to say that she is Mrs. Bob Stewart. Baccarat Bob you wretched men at the clubs call him, don’t you?”

“That was enough to induce convulsions, let alone neuralgia,” commented Loring.

They both laughed, and the laugh was succeeded by a moment’s silence. Then Loring said casually:

“What has become of your cousin, Falconer, among other people, by-the-bye? I don’t hear anything of him, and his grim presence was hardly to be overlooked. Have you any little escapade of his to reveal, now?”

Mrs. Romayne laughed a little harshly.

“Unfortunately not,” she said. “His absence is due to the most characteristically orthodox causes. He was ill about three months ago. He went into a hospital sort of place—one of those new things—and he was rather bad. Now he’s somewhere or other recovering. I fancy he won’t be in London again yet.”

Loring received the news with a comment as indifferent as his question had been, and then there fell a second silence. Loring’s eyes, very keen and calculating, were fixed upon the carpet; on Mrs. Romayne’s face was an accentuation of the intent, preoccupied look which had lain behind all her previous gaiety. The two faces suggested curiously that the man and woman alike felt individually and each irrespective of the other that something in the shape of a prologue was over, and that the real interest of the interview might begin.

The silence was broken by Mrs. Romayne; she pushed the tea-table further from her and leaned back in her chair, as she said casually:

“Did you and Julian meet at the club last night?”

Loring followed her example and took an easier and more careless pose.

“Yes!” he said. “We had an hour’s talk together. I was very glad I had looked in. I hardly expected to find him there!”

Mrs. Romayne laughed, and the sound was rather forced. “Oh,” she said lightly, “he is a tremendous clubbist! All young men go through the phase, don’t you think?” She paused a moment, and her voice sounded as though her breath was coming rather quickly as she said carelessly:

“You find him a good deal altered, I dare say? Six months”—she paused; her breath was troublesome—“six months makes such a difference at his time of life!” she finished.

Loring looked at her. He had long ago decided that when a woman was “made up” it was of very little use to direct observation to anything but her eyes.

“Yes!” he said reflectively, as though debating a question already existing in his mind, and answering it for the first time. “He is altered! I suppose—yes, I suppose six months must make a difference!”

A sharp breath as at a sudden stab of pain had parted Mrs. Romayne’s lips at his first words, and he saw a hard, defiant brightness come into her eyes.

“I was very glad to see—well, may one allude to what one could not help seeing yesterday?” he went on in another and much lighter tone.

“One may allude to it confidentially!” returned Mrs. Romayne, and her tone was rather high-pitched and uneven. “Not otherwise, I am sorry to say—at present! Did Julian say anything about it?” Her tone as she asked the question was carelessness itself, but her fingers were tightly clenched round her handkerchief as she waited for the answer.

“A word or two!” returned Loring. “I inferred that it was only a question of time. Has it been going on long?”

“All the winter!” she answered, and again there was that little forced laugh. “You see, unfortunately, ‘she’ has been away! I had hoped that it would have come off before she went away, but it didn’t!”

She stopped rather abruptly; and Loring, watching her keenly, said:

“You think it is time he should marry?”

“I think—well, yes, I suppose I do! Don’t you agree with me? You young men are so apt to get into mischief, you know!”

“I suppose I can hardly deny the general principle,” answered Loring with a slight smile, “though it is some time since I have been a young man in any practical sense! But as to Julian, I hardly know——”

“But you must know!” returned Mrs. Romayne quickly, and with an affected laugh. “And you must know, in the first place, that I’m relying on you for a good deal of co-operation—oh, of course, not in these delicate affairs!”

A certain shade of attention—just that attention which might become gravely or gaily sympathetic according to the demand made upon him—appeared in Loring’s manner. He replied to her last words with a gesture of mock deprecation which answered the tone in which they were spoken; but a quiet, reliable interest touched his voice as he spoke, which seemed to respond rather to the possibilities of the situation.

“You have only to command me!” he said.

There was a hungry intentness about Mrs. Romayne’s mouth now, and about her clenched hand, which only a tremendous effort and the sacrifice of all reality of tone could have kept out of her voice.

“To tell you the truth,” she said lightly, “there was rather a catastrophe in the autumn; a girl, you know, silly boy—the usual thing! I fancy it has upset him a good deal in every way, and there is nothing like marriage for settling a young man down after such an affair!”

She paused as though—while her confidence in her statement, and the point of view from which she had presented the matter stood in no need of confirmation—she yet craved to hear it subscribed to by another voice. And Loring nodded with grave, attentive assent.

“Quite so!” he said sententiously.

“Now, of course,” she continued, “of course a woman can’t know all the ins and outs of a young man’s life, even when she’s his mother. It’s out of the question; and to be very frank with you”—there was something painful now about the lightness of her tone—“his mother had to be rather autocratic, and the boy didn’t much like it. Consequently I can’t feel sure that—well, that she knows even as much as she might about his affairs, now! That’s why I’m confiding in you in this expansive way! I want you to look after him for me!”

Loring changed his position, and nodded again gravely and comprehendingly.

“I understand!” he said slowly. “I understand!” The statement was true in far wider sense than Mrs. Romayne could be aware of. There was a moment’s silence, during which he seemed to deliberate deeply on the facts presented to him, watched intently by Mrs. Romayne; and then he roused himself, as it were. “I won’t say that your confidence in me gives me great pleasure,” he said, “because I hope you know that. I will simply say that I will do all I can!”

The words were admirably spoken, with a gentleness and consideration of tone and manner which were all the more striking from their contrast with his usual demeanour; and they carried an impression of strength and sympathy such as no woman could have resisted. A strange spasm as of intense relief passed across Mrs. Romayne’s face, and for the moment she did not speak. Then she said low and hurriedly:

“I have heard that he plays, and it—it worries me! A boy will often listen to a friend whom he respects, and—and—I rely on you.”

“I consider myself honoured!”

A pause followed, and then Loring continued with an easy seriousness which was very reassuring:

“I am very glad to know all this, for it gives me a key, without which I might have blundered considerably! To return confidence for confidence, and to assure you that I really have some power to help you, I will say that I made a little discovery about Julian yesterday which perplexed me a good deal. I shall know now how to act. If he must speculate——”

He was interrupted. The daintily coloured face before him changed suddenly and terribly; a ghastly reality that lay behind that expression of carelessness seemed on the instant to crash through all veils and masks as Mrs. Romayne rose to her feet with a hoarse cry, her face drawn and working, her hands stretched out as though to ward off something unendurably horrible.

“No!” she gasped, and she was absolutely fighting and struggling for breath, as though something clutched at her throat. “Not that! oh, good heavens, not that! You must stop it! You must prevent it. He must not! He must not! Do you hear me? He must not!”

There are some natures which not even contact with throbbing, vibrating reality can touch or thrill, and Loring, surprised, indeed, had risen also, cynical, imperturbable, and cool-headed as usual.

“By Jove!” he said to himself critically. “Who would have thought she had it in her?” The choked, agonised voice stopped abruptly, and he met her eyes, wild and fierce in their desperate command, and said quickly and soothingly:

“I will do anything you wish, I assure you! You have only to speak! I am grieved beyond all words to have distressed you so! I had no idea——”

A hoarse laugh broke from Mrs. Romayne, and she turned away with a strange gesture almost as though it were herself she derided, and Loring was forgotten by her, clasping her hands fiercely over her face. Loring paused a moment and then went on smoothly:

“There is nothing to disturb you, I assure you, in what I was going to say. Most young men have a turn for dabbling in speculation at some time or other, and though I know some ladies have a horror of it, I don’t think you would find that there is much foundation for that horror.” He stopped somewhat abruptly. He had suddenly remembered that he was speaking to the widow of William Romayne, of whose final collapse he knew the outline. He looked at the woman before him with her hidden face, her figure rigid and tense from head to foot, and thought to himself callously how curious these survivals of emotion were. She did not move or speak, and he went on with a tone of delicate sympathy:

“No doubt, if you really think it well to stop it with a high hand, it can be done! I ought to say that I have rather broken confidence in revealing Julian’s doings, as he is very anxious that you should not think him dissatisfied or ungrateful, and did not wish you to hear of them.” A shiver shook the bowed figure from head to foot. “I’m afraid I thought more of reassuring you than of him! I thought that if you knew that he and I were in the same affair, and that he would act solely on my advice, you would, perhaps, feel happier about him!”

But the answer he wanted, the answer which would have enabled him to continue his reassurances on the purely personal line, was not forthcoming. Mrs. Romayne neither spoke nor moved. He had no intention of risking his position by foolhardiness, so he adjusted his line of argument to the darkness in which her silence left him.

“As I said, however,” he continued gently, “if you prefer to talk to him on the subject, and ask him to give it up, no doubt he will do so rather than distress you! And if you lay your commands on me to that effect, I will certainly refuse to go any further with him! But may I say that I think you would be wiser to let things take their course? It is not a good thing to thwart a young man in the frame of mind you have hinted at as being Julian’s at present. If you can conquer your horror of the idea, I am sure you will be better satisfied in the end!”

There was a dead silence. At last Mrs. Romayne raised her head slowly, not turning her face towards Loring, but looking straight before her, as though utterly oblivious of his personal presence. There was a strange, fleeting dignity about her drawn face, with its wide, ghastly eyes; the dignity which comes from horror confronted.

“Take their course!” she said in a still, far-away voice. She paused a moment, and then went on in the same tone. “You think this is—inevitable?” The last word came with a strange ring.

“I think that any attempt at its prevention would be most undesirable,” said Loring. “It might lead—of course, it is not very likely, but still it is possible—to private speculations on Master Julian’s part!”

“Very well, then!” There was a curious, hard steadiness in her tone, as of one who perforce concedes a point to an adversary, and braces every nerve afresh to face the new situation thus created.

“That is like you!” exclaimed Loring admiringly. The tone of her voice had passed him by. “You will be glad, I know! Now, let me say again how awfully sorry I am to have distressed you, and then I’ll go. You’ll be glad to get rid of me!”

She did not seem to hear the words, but as his voice ceased, she turned her face slowly towards him with a vague, uncertain look upon it, as though her consciousness was struggling back to him, and the life he represented, across a great gulf. She looked at him a moment, and then that dignity, and a strange pathos which that groping look had possessed, gave way before a ghastly smile.

“I’m afraid I’ve been making myself most ridiculous!” she said, and there was a difficult, uncertain sprightliness about her weak voice. “So awfully sorry! I’m rather absurd about speculation. Old memories with which I needn’t bore you! You’ll look after my boy, then? Thanks!” She held out her hand as she spoke with a little affected gesture, but as he placed his hand in it her fingers closed with an icy clutch. “And now, do you know, I must send you away! Too bad, isn’t it? But there is such a thing as dressing for dinner.”

“Quite so,” returned Loring gaily. “It is very good of you to have been bothered with me so long! Good-bye!”

“Good-bye!” she answered. “You’ll report progress, of course?”

“Certainly! We’re a pair of conspirators, are we not?”

When Mrs. Romayne came down to dinner that night her face was as haggard as though the interval intervening had held for her another three days’ illness. But the hard determination in her eyes was more intense than ever.

END OF VOL. I
F. M. EVANS & CO., LIMITED, PRINTERS, CRYSTAL PALACE, S.E.