The cottage which Mrs. Romayne had taken for August and September, on Julian’s refusal to go abroad, was situated a few miles above Henley. It was a very charming little house, to which the term “cottage” was applicable only in mock humility; and it was very charmingly situated. It had a delightful garden, not large, but full of “roses, and sunflowers, and all sorts of things,” as Mrs. Romayne explained to Julian after her visit of inspection. Its lawns sloped down to the river, and altogether, on the same authority, it was a wonderful chance to get hold of it.

The statement which Mrs. Romayne had made to Lady Bracondale on Julian’s authority, that there were “nice people about,” had originated, as a matter of fact, not with Julian, but with his mother herself. It was quite true, nevertheless; but apparently Julian’s sudden desire for quiet had proved infectious. The acquaintance between herself and her present neighbours being of the slightest, Mrs. Romayne made no such attempt as might have been expected of her to develope that acquaintance.

She seemed to be strangely without impetus in herself towards action of any kind. She was “resting,” some people might have said; she was pausing, certainly. But whether, as the days went on, her life did not signify rather temporary and enforced quiescence, than the peaceful and pleasant suspension of labour, might have been an open question.

It was a hot, bright August; day after day the sun shone steadily down, as Julian departed for town after an early breakfast, at which his mother never failed to appear. Day after day it shone through all the long, little-broken hours upon the quiet house and garden, about which the one woman’s figure moved in almost total solitude, until, with the evening, Julian returned again. Evening after evening the mother and son spent alone, but by no means always together. After their dinner, during which conversation seldom flagged between them, any more than it would have flagged between two friendly and well-bred acquaintances, Mrs. Romayne would sit in the drawing-room with a bit of fashionable fancy-work in her hand, into which she only occasionally put a stitch; and sometimes Julian would spend half an hour with her there, reading the newspaper and carrying on the talk of dinner; or sometimes he would stroll out into the garden at once, and come in only just before bed-time.

Mrs. Romayne never followed him and never questioned him. Perhaps it was the curiously still life she led which brought so strange and still an expression to her face; a stillness which suggested a slow, wearing waiting, and a mingled concentration, watchfulness, and patience.

It was an evening in the second week of September, and she was walking up and down the lawn in the fading sunset light. She was moving with slow, regular steps, with the monotonous motion of a woman to whom the even movement brought some sort of relief or soothing. There was an indescribable touch of desolateness about her lonely figure as she moved up and down before the empty house.

A servant came out to her by-and-by with some newly-arrived letters. She took them, and then, her monotonous motion being perforce suspended, a sense of physical fatigue seemed to assert itself, and she sat down on a low basket-chair.

A sigh came from her as she did so, one of those sighs which in their unconsciousness are so suggestive of habitual suffering. She paused a moment, looking away into space with absent eyes. Then she seemed to rouse herself, and took up one of the letters as if forcing herself to seek relief from the current of her monotonous thoughts. She had opened the envelope and read the letter half through in a mechanical, uninterested way, when its contents seemed suddenly to arrest her attention. A change came to her expression, a change which in its slight quickening and revival showed how dulled, almost numbed, it had been before.

She turned once more to the beginning of the letter and read it again.

Mrs. Romayne leant back in her chair, not indolently, but with an intent consideration in every line of her figure; and letting the hand that held the letter fall on her knee, she sat gazing at the written words with sharp, angrily sparkling eyes, which looked as though they were bent on piercing through the words themselves to the meaning which she believed they hid. She was evidently surprised and annoyed; as evidently she gave not an instant’s credence to the reason alleged for the postponement of the visit in question; and the slight involved in this postponement, indefinite, as she noticed with an unpleasant little smile, seemed to stimulate her.

Her face had grown even vindictive, when her eyes fell on the postmark of the second letter lying on her knee. It was that of the same little Scotch town, the name of which was stamped upon the already opened envelope. She took it up eagerly, and as she saw the handwriting, she paused for an instant, and a flash of intense consideration passed across her face. Then she tore it hastily open. It was from Mrs. Pomeroy, and it conveyed in three long-winded and incoherent sheets a piece of news which the writer was sure would delight Mrs. Romayne.

“Dear Maud,” the letter said, was just engaged to “that charming Mr. Loring.” Mrs. Pomeroy’s mind seemed to be in a state of somewhat considerable confusion between a theoretical and conventional sense that it was very sad for her to lose her daughter, and a certain practical and actual sense, which by no means harmonised with the theoretical one, and all unconsciously threw a good deal of light on the relations between the mother and daughter, as they actually existed. The coherence of the letter was further disturbed by sundry sentences, which dovetailed so oddly into the general fabric that they had somewhat the appearance of being inserted to order; sentences which conveyed various repetitions of “dear Maud’s” assurance of Mrs. Romayne’s congratulations; and various repetitions of the statement that Mr. Loring’s financial position had recently improved amazingly, and that he was sure of a seat in Parliament at the forthcoming general election.

“He has been staying with the Stewarts during the whole of our visit to them,” the letter ended. “Dear Lady Marion has been so kind about it, and taken such an interest.”

“Ah!”

The exclamation, uttered, evidently involuntarily, just above her breath, came from Mrs. Romayne’s lips sharply and bitterly. She had read the letter through with certain quick movements of her eyebrows, and mocking smiles coming and going about her thin lips, and they smiled again as she folded the letter deliberately and put it back into its envelope. She was looking thoroughly roused now, and there was a confidence in her alert, determined expression. It was the kindling up of martial spirit at a challenging trumpet-call from a well-known battlefield.

If Marston Loring and his future wife were indeed arranging their forces for the undermining of Mrs. Romayne’s social position—and Miss Pomeroy and Loring between them could have pieced out a very sufficient explanation of Lady Marion Stewart’s note—the campaign, judging from appearances at that moment, was likely to be far from a tame one.

Mrs. Romayne was still sitting with the letters in her hand, tapping one foot with impatient vigour upon the grass, and there was the same eager intentness in her eyes, when from the house behind her the sound of a dinner-bell rang out. She started violently, and in the start something seemed to fall between her and the subject on which her thoughts had been busy. A curious shade of that new stillness replaced the energy on her face. It was the dressing-bell, and she rose mechanically; and as she turned towards the house her eyes fell upon the figure of Julian. He had evidently been standing on the verandah, and as she rose he had turned, and was disappearing into the house. Another shade of stillness fell upon her face, as though the letters she had received, and the feelings they had stirred, had receded into the distance.

It often happened that the mother and son did not meet, on Julian’s return home in the evening, until dinner-time, and it happened so this evening. The dinner-bell was ringing when Julian came downstairs with a quick word or two of apology, and followed his mother into the dining-room.

Julian looked as though his month’s hard work had by no means agreed with him. His face was even painfully thin and worn, and there was an expression of hard concentration about it which seemed to age it strangely. His eyes were rather sunken. It was a curious feature of a change in him less easily defined, that his likeness to his mother had faded considerably. All the character of his face now seemed to originate about his mouth; that mouth of which Mrs. Romayne had been wont to say with affected gaiety that it was like nobody in particular; that mouth which had been a somewhat weak and undecided feature. There was nothing undecided about it now, and Mrs. Romayne never looked at it without a deepening of that stillness on her face. It was set into heavy, resolute lines.

No one, indeed, judging from the bare outline of Julian’s daily life during that hot August, could have wondered at the signs of physical wear and tear that he exhibited. Ten o’clock, on every one of those sultry days, found him at work, not indeed in the Temple, but in an office in the City; and it was from the same office that he would issue forth at about five o’clock to catch the train for Henley, sometimes with sullen determination, sometimes with a pale, fierce excitement on his face.

The affairs of the Welcome Diamond Mining Company had readjusted themselves, after the blow which had threatened the company’s very existence, as hardly the most sanguine could have hoped. Ten days after the announcement of the presence of water in the mine, some of the newspapers published another telegram which had been received by the directors. The passage of the water, by which the existing mine was rendered practically useless, had revealed hitherto unsuspected possibilities, and there appeared to be little doubt that the first mine had been, as it were, only a pledge of still richer strata yet to be worked. One telegram followed another, confirming the report in greater detail. Prospectuses were issued, setting forth a proposal to utilise the opportunity thus opened, and debentures were issued for the providing of the necessary funds. These debentures were taken up somewhat slowly at first, but on the arrival in England of specimens of diamonds from the new lead, together with a circumstantial report, they were taken up with a rush. Works were understood to be already on foot, and dividends were looked for at an early date. The new managing director of the company was Julian Romayne.

There was a kind of dry excitement about him to-night behind the deliberate assumption of conversational interest which was his never-changing manner with his mother now, and his hand shook a little as he poured himself out more wine than usual.

He did not rejoin his mother in the drawing-room, saying something as she left him about having letters to write; and two hours afterwards he was walking up and down the lawn in the moonlight with a cigar.

There was a fierce restlessness in his step, and there was a fierce restlessness in his face, too. He had been walking there for half an hour when a shadow passed across the blind of the drawing-room window—the night was very hot and the window was wide open—and the blind was drawn up. Mrs. Romayne’s figure stood there outlined by the lamplight within. The drawing-room window was shadowed from the moonlight by an angle of the house.

“Good night, Julian!” she called.

Julian stopped in his walk mechanically.

“Good night, mother!” he answered. The figure in the window seemed to hesitate for a moment; then Mrs. Romayne moved and drew down the blind, the lights in the room behind went out one by one, and Julian resumed his walk in the moonlight as mechanically as he had stopped it.

It was his custom to go, every morning, first to his room in the Temple in case any letters might be waiting for him there; and on the following morning, a slight accident on the line having considerably delayed his train, he paused a moment before giving his order to the cabman. He was very late, and there was a feverish impatience in every line of his face. He had almost decided that any private letters might wait until the next day, when, with a sudden, unaccountable reaction, he sprang into the cab and told the man to drive to the Temple.

He had apparently repented of the resolution by the time the cab stopped, for he sprang out with a muttered imprecation on the delay. There was only one letter waiting for him, and he caught it up fiercely. Then the handwriting in which it was directed caught his eye.

All the tumultuous heat and impatience of his face died out suddenly and utterly. He stood for a moment staring down at the letter, white to the very lips. Then he seemed absolutely and physically to set his teeth, and in the intense hardness of determination which set its mark on every muscle of his face, his whole expression would have seemed to deteriorate, markedly and terribly, but for the desperation in his eyes which was little short of agony.

He moved abruptly, crossed the room, unlocked a drawer in his writing-table, and thrust the letter in with quick, deliberate movements, unopened. He locked the drawer again sharply, and turned and went hastily out of the room.

The letter was from Clemence; it was the first sign of her existence which he had received since their parting on that June evening nearly three months ago.

He was looking only older, harder, and more recklessly resolute when about a quarter of an hour later he entered the office of the Welcome Diamond Mining Company. The feeble-looking little messenger was in solitary possession, and he looked up rather uneasily as Julian wished him a brief good morning and crossed to the door of the manager’s room.

“Mr. Ramsay’s just gone out, Mr. Romayne,” he said. “I was to say he would be in again directly.”

Julian made a curt gesture of assent and went on into the private room. There was plenty of work waiting for him, it appeared, and he was still applying himself to it with dogged concentration, when, nearly an hour later, the door opened and Ramsay appeared.

“There you are!” he said indifferently. “I thought you weren’t going to turn up this morning.”

Julian had just glanced up from the letter he was writing to acknowledge the other man’s entrance, and he went on writing as he explained briefly that his train had been delayed.

“No particular reason for wanting me, I suppose?” he said in a brief, businesslike way, as he laid down his pen.

Ramsay sat down deliberately, and put his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat.

“Well, yes,” he said. “There’s a matter here which rather calls for the attention of the managing director.”

He held out a letter as he spoke, and Julian took it and read it quickly. Then he laid it down on the table before him, and looked up slowly at Ramsay. His face was rather pale.

“A general meeting of shareholders!” he said. “Demanded!”

There was a moment’s pause, while he looked steadily into Ramsay’s immoveable face, and then he added in the same rather difficult tone:

“Did you expect this, Ramsay?”

“I never expect,” returned Ramsay drily. “Such a thing was on the cards, of course.”

Julian’s face grew dark and calculating.

“Well,” he said harshly, after another moment’s pause, “it must be arranged for, of course. What do you propose?”

Ramsay answered the question by another.

“Do you happen to know anything,” he said, “of a man named Compton—Howard Compton?”

Julian’s brows contracted as if with an involuntary effort to detect the relevancy of the question as he answered tersely:

“Yes. He and I belong to the same club.”

“You didn’t know, I suppose, that some shares in the Welcome have drifted into his hands?”

Julian shook his head with a quick frown of vexation.

“Ah!” observed Ramsay; “they have, though. And it has come to my knowledge that various enquiries have been made into the state of the Welcome Diamond Mine; made on the spot, and made in secret. And I’ve traced these enquiries to this Mr. Howard Compton.”

A dreadful grey pallor had begun to spread itself over Julian’s face, and the muscles seemed to have grown rigid with the intense force with which he held them to their expression of dogged determination. He did not speak, and Ramsay went on in the same dry, indifferent way:

“He is either a very clever hand, or very cleverly advised. The one point we score, at present, is that he has not done as he intended to do, and taken us by surprise.”

“Do you mean to say——”

The words seemed to come from between Julian’s dry, white lips almost without consciousness on his part. His eyes were fixed upon Ramsay with a hard, unseeing kind of stare, his voice was hoarse, uneven, and hardly audible, and it died away, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“The meaning is obvious, of course,” returned Ramsay. “An affair of this kind is a ticklish thing to pull off, and a hitch of this kind is always possible, though I never came across an affair in which it seemed less probable. I don’t know yet exactly how much our friend knows. The meeting won’t be a particularly placid affair, of course, and you’re likely to have a warm time of it. But, of course, there’s a chance that he mayn’t know quite enough, and we may be able to pull it through, yet.”

“And if not?”

Something seemed to rattle in Julian’s throat as he spoke the words, and they came out thick and husky.

“If not?” repeated Ramsay. “Well, if not, I think I wouldn’t go to that meeting if I were you.”

There was a moment’s dead silence, broken only by Julian’s heavy, laboured breathing. The two men sat there face to face, and their eyes met with a terrible significance of what was better unexpressed in words. Then Ramsay’s dull eyes took a deliberate survey of Julian’s face. It was drawn and livid, and the elder man rose and took from the cupboard some brandy. He poured it into a glass with a slightly contemptuous smile, and put it into Julian’s hand.

“You’re the very devil to work,” he said drily. “And for all I know you may be first-rate as a winner; but I can’t say you’re a good loser. And it’s a useful lesson to learn in this business.”

Julian drank the brandy and rose mechanically. The strong stimulant hardly seemed to touch the blanched horror of his face.

“What do you propose to do?” he said in a stiff, toneless voice.

“Personally, nothing,” returned Ramsay, “until I know more. Business will go on as usual. You’ll call the meeting, of course. I’ll tell Harrison to get the forms ready for you to sign. They must be sent out to-morrow. Going?”

“Yes,” said Julian heavily. “There’s nothing more I need do to-day.”

He took his hat and went slowly out of the office, looking straight before him like a man walking in his sleep. Ramsay looked after him, and stood for a minute rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“Not quite what I thought he was,” he said to himself; “though he has served this purpose well enough. Pity he hasn’t a little more of his father in him. Got all the makings of the right sort, but he can’t stay.”