Marston Loring was sitting at his writing-table, writing with an intentness which harmonised oddly with the suggestion of his evening dress—correct and up-to-date in the minutest particular. He had come rapidly out from the inner room two or three minutes before, evidently acting upon a recently-formed determination; and he was writing now swiftly and decisively. But there was nothing of rashness or impulsiveness about his face or manner as he wrote; they were even keener, more calculating and cynical than usual. He finished his note, directed it with the same decision, pushed it aside, and, taking up an open letter which had been lying before him as he wrote, leant back in his chair, and began to re-read it. The note, on which the ink was scarcely dry, was addressed to a broker in the City. The letter which he had taken up bore the postmark of a small town in South Africa, and was marked “Private” and “Urgent.”

Three days had passed since Julian’s explanation to his mother as to his relations with Miss Pomeroy.

Marston Loring had come back from South Africa three months before, with some very excellent machinery ready to his hand for the production of what would materially simplify and embellish his future career—a large fortune. That the machinery was such as a man of honour would have hesitated to put in motion; that the hands which worked it could hardly escape unstained, affected him not at all. The stains were not such as could be pointed at; it was hardly likely that they would be detected. Certain fellow mechanics were necessary to the proceedings; one of these he had found in Ramsay; the other he had created, so to speak, in Julian Romayne.

The first noticeable production of that machinery had been that first decisive rise in “Welcomes” at the end of June; and since that time it had been worked—mainly by the master-mechanics, Ramsay and Loring—with unceasing skill, energy, and unscrupulousness. Various causes had co-operated to prevent such a speedy consummation as Loring had anticipated when he told Julian that the inside of a month would see the end of the proceedings. The month had gone by, and the shares, though they were now worth ten times as much as had been paid for them by the three in whose hands they lay, had not yet touched the highest value to which it was proposed to raise them—to which they were rising, as a matter of fact, with ever-increasing rapidity. And yet, notwithstanding the apparent certainty that in another week his shares would have materially increased in value, the note which Loring had just written contained instructions for the disposal of all his interest in the Welcome Diamond Mining Company, without fail, on the following day.

A very small stone will put out of gear the most skilfully constructed and reliable machine. A very small modicum of fact will reduce the most skilful and elaborate fiction to its elements. The letter which Loring was studying now with knit brows and compressed lips brought him private information, which he knew might be public property twenty-four hours later, to the effect that the Welcome Diamond Mine was under water. As soon as that fact was generally made known, shares in the Company would be practically worthless.

He folded the letter and sat for a moment tapping it meditatively against the table. He was thinking deeply; not now about the actual contents of the letter, but of a question which they had raised in his mind; a question interwoven and complicated with other carefully-laid plans. Finally he threw the letter down on the table with a movement of sudden resolution.

“I must!” he said to himself. “It won’t do to risk a row.”

He glanced hastily at his watch, and then drew out a sheet of note-paper and wrote rapidly:

He directed the letter, and then rose quickly, took up the hat and light overcoat lying on a chair near him, and went out with the letter in his hand. At the porter’s lodge he stopped. “Get this sent by hand this evening,” he said, giving the man the letter addressed to Julian. The other letter he posted himself as he passed along the Strand.

He was on his way to dine in Curzon Street, and among his subsequent engagements for the evening the Academy soirÉe occupied a prominent place.

It was nearly twelve o’clock when he arrived at Burlington House, and the vestibule and staircase were alike crowded with people going up and coming down; smiling, nodding, and generally obstructing the way, with a bland oblivion of any but their own individual rights to a passage.

At the foot of the stairs Loring was seized upon and absorbed in a portentous obstruction, of which the centre figure was Mrs. Halse, a truly electrifying figure in a painfully fashionable evening “frock” of a brilliant green.

“I was just looking for a man,” she said, in her usual strident tones. “They get such an extraordinary lot of people together here that picking out any one one knows is like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. I suppose nobody ever did look for a needle in a bundle of hay, by-the-bye. Mr. Halse isn’t here, of course”—Mr. Halse was seldom known to appear in public, and when he did so, his meek presence was obviously entirely devoid of interest for his wife—“and I’m looking after Hilda Compton; her husband’s coming to fetch her, but he doesn’t care about her going about alone. Quite right, too, I tell him,” she added, with a laugh. “But of course it won’t last.”

Hilda Compton, a three months’ bride, was standing by looking like a Hilda Newton who had been born and bred in the centre of London society, daring in dress, self-possessed in manner, audaciously pretty in face.

She echoed Mrs. Halse’s laugh, and the latter went on, to Loring:

“You can come upstairs with us. It’s such a bore not to have a man!” and turning, led the way.

That characteristic feature in her vociferous personality—Mrs. Halse’s hobbies—had become crystallised to a great extent since Hilda Newton’s engagement and marriage into a passion for matrimonial affairs; not necessarily for match-making; match-marring was quite as keen an interest with her.

The comments with which she beguiled their way into the first room were mainly called forth by the young men and maidens of her acquaintance who happened to catch her eye, and whom she suspected of mutual likings or loathings. They had drifted halfway across the room without coming within speaking distance of any one they knew, when Mrs. Halse broke off in an energetically-whispered account of a certain pretty young woman’s partiality for—according to Mrs. Halse—an unresponsive young man, and exclaimed suddenly:

“That’s Maud Pomeroy over there, isn’t it? It’s my belief that she wears those ridiculous white dresses so that people may have something to remember her by. There’s nothing in her face, that’s certain!”

Loring glanced through the doorway into the other room, to where Miss Pomeroy, in white silk, was smiling very prettily upon a young man who was obviously, if his countenance was to be relied upon, making inane remarks to her. He was a very rich young man, and he had lately succeeded to a title. Loring smiled rather enigmatically.

“It is surely impossible to associate two such dissimilar ideas as artifice and Miss Pomeroy—oil and water, you know.”

“Milk and water, you mean!” put in Mrs. Compton, with a laugh.

Mrs. Halse responded to the little witticism with obstreperous hilarity, and then turned suddenly and confidentially to Loring, and spoke in an eager semi-whisper:

“Now, perhaps you can tell me,” she said; “nobody who knows her seems to have been able to pick up anything—not that she has any intimate friends, that kind of girl never has. But you know him, and men gossip much more than women, when all’s said and done. Has she behaved infamously to him, or has he behaved infamously to her?”

“Has who behaved infamously to whom?” said Loring, smiling.

Mrs. Halse unfurled her fan, and began to waft it vigorously and excitedly to and fro.

“You do know something about it!” she exclaimed. “Hilda, he wouldn’t fence like that unless he knew something. But you’re not going to get out of it like that,” she continued, addressing herself again to Loring. “I’ll tell you plainly of whom I am talking, and you’ll tell me plainly what has happened. Maud Pomeroy is the she, and young Romayne is the he. Now, then.”

“I give you my word that I know nothing about it.”

“I don’t believe you,” was the answer, given with uncompromising vigour and directness. “Good heavens! Somebody must know something about it. A month ago the Romaynes and the Pomeroys were never apart. You couldn’t go into a room without seeing him making eyes at her, and her simpering up at him, and their respective mammas exchanging confidences in corners. I was within an ace of congratulating them all round heaps of times. I lived with my mouth open to do it, so to speak; they all seemed so keen about it, it was evidently a matter for fervent congratulation. Though why Mrs. Pomeroy should have cared about it I can’t think!” this parenthetically. “He won’t have anything of his own while his mother lives. I suppose Maud fancied him! It’s my belief that that poor woman daren’t call her soul her own where Miss Maud is concerned!”

Mrs. Halse paused, but only for the purpose of taking breath. That very necessary process being accomplished, she continued her summary of the position:

“Then she goes to stay with prospective mamma-in-law, and we all stand on tip-toe and hold our breath. She spends a fortnight there, and the next thing we know is that the whole affair is apparently off! Off, if you please! No more making of eyes, no more simperings, no more confidences. And no explanation of any sort or kind. Mr. Loring, I cannot stand it, and I insist on knowing what you know.”

“Mrs. Halse, you do know what I know—that is—nothing.”

If a large and smart lady could by any possibility permit herself to stamp a large and heavy foot in the midst of a crowded and fashionable assembly, Mrs. Halse stamped hers at that moment. She gazed for an instant into Loring’s imperturbable face, and then, becoming convinced of his sincerity, she turned to Mrs. Compton with a gesture of despair.

“Hilda!” she said, “if somebody doesn’t find out something soon, I shall die of suspense!”

As it seemed not improbable from her demeanour at the moment that she would obviate the chances of such a calamity by hurling herself upon one of the objects of her interest and wresting a solution of the mystery from him or her by main force, it was perhaps as well that at that moment a temporary distraction presented itself in the shape of a popular actor. Mrs. Halse was very fond of popular actors; they had been a hobby with her at one time. And in the movement and breaking up of the group which ensued, Loring drifted quietly away.

He had made his way gradually into the big room, when he suddenly quickened his steps and began to thread his way skilfully and rapidly through the crowd. Mrs. Romayne was standing on the opposite side of the room, smiling an invitation to him to come and speak to her.

Mrs. Romayne had not been looking her best lately. Somehow the piquant style and daring colour which she affected hardly suited her as they had been wont to do. To-night there was a tired look upon her face which seemed to reveal some recently-traced lines about her mouth; lines of intense and almost dogged determination; and to her sparkling eyes, if she allowed them a moment’s repose, there came a haggard look, which had seemed for the last three days to lie only just beneath the surface. But these were subtle, hardly perceptible points, and for the rest she remained a noticeably attractive woman of the most pronounced artificial type.

“Where’s the boy?” said Loring easily, when they had shaken hands. “Is he here?”

Mrs. Romayne shook her head and laughed.

“No!” she said. “He rather bars the soirÉe. A mistake, I think. One must take it for what it is, of course; an omnium-gatherum of a perfectly preposterous nature; looked at from that point of view it’s not unfunny! Do look at that girl over there! She thinks her garment is a revelation to all beholders!”

“So it is,” returned Loring drily.

Mrs. Romayne laughed, and dropped the glasses with which she had been coolly surveying the garment in question.

“That was rather obvious, wasn’t it?” she said gaily. “By-the-bye, did you want to see Julian?”

There was a moment’s pause after Loring had replied, pleasantly enough, in the negative, and then Mrs. Romayne looked up at him suddenly, and said:

“It’s frightfully hot in here, don’t you think? Suppose we try one of the less popular rooms?” She stopped a moment, and then added with her most artificial laugh: “Of course, you gather from that that I’m going to victimise you again? Yes; I do want a little quiet talk with you. Who’d be a conspirator?”

There was nothing of the unwilling victim, at least, in Loring’s tone or manner as he deprecated her words. Nor was there either reluctance or tedium in his face as he followed her through the room. On the contrary, it was almost lighted up by an expression of sudden purpose.

Mrs. Romayne led the way to the almost deserted miniature room, and they began to walk slowly up and down, to all intents and purposes alone together. There seemed to be no particular point to Mrs. Romayne’s desire for a private conference with her fellow-conspirator. She talked about Julian; talked about him carelessly, artificially, but with a persistence which only another mother could have understood; slipping in little questions now and then on all sorts of details connected with that business side of a man’s life, as to which, she said, “women are always so in the dark;” and reverting again and again to her satisfaction and reliance in his mentor.

“It’s rather absurd to quote those ridiculous old proverbs,” she said at last, laughing affectedly, “but isn’t there one, or a fable, or something, about a duck whose chickens—no, a hen whose chickens, it would be, wouldn’t it?—would take to the water, and agitated her awfully because she couldn’t go after them? That’s exactly what I feel like, I assure you. And I look upon you as an exceptionally sensible water-bird who is also at home on the land—a kind of connecting link. Humiliating similes, aren’t they?”

Loring smiled in answer to her laugh. But his tone as he answered her was rather grave.

“Not by any means humiliating as far as I am concerned,” he said; “for you assume a certain amount of sympathy between yourself and me. May I tell you what a pleasure that idea gives me?”

He spoke slowly and deliberately, and Mrs. Romayne started slightly. She glanced up at his face for an instant, unfurling her fan, and using it gently, as though the movement were an outlet for some sort of faint agitation. Loring was not looking at her, his eyes were fixed for the moment on the opposite wall, and his profile told her nothing. There was a hardly perceptible pause, and then he went on, with an admirable mixture of deference, admiration—the depth of which seemed the greater in that it was rather suggested than expressed—and the practical confidence of a man of the world.

“Don’t think that I am underrating Julian,” he said, “or that my regard for him, personally, is anything but a very warm and sincere affair, when I tell you that it is a long time now since Julian has figured in my thoughts as anything but his mother’s son. Because he is his mother’s son there are very few things I would not do for him, very little trouble I would not take for him.”

He hardly paused. Mrs. Romayne, rather, broke in on his speech with a high-pitched laugh.

“That’s very kind and flattering,” she said, and there was something astonishingly hasty and nervous in the way she spoke.

“I hope it doesn’t come upon you quite as a surprise,” answered Loring, with the slightest suggestion of a cynical smile unseen by Mrs. Romayne. “I hope it doesn’t need any words of mine to show you what I have tried to show you in more practical ways. You have honoured me with a great deal of confidence, and you have honoured me still further by putting it in my power to be of some slight service to you. Will you not give me still further powers in that direction? Will you not make our interests practically one by becoming my wife?”

He turned to her as he finished, and in spite of the admirable composure and deference with which he had spoken, his eyes were very eager and elated, almost as though with anticipated triumph.

Mrs. Romayne met his eyes, and stood for a moment gazing into them speechless and motionless, as though the blank astonishment written on every line of her face had absolutely paralysed her.

“Mr. Loring!” she said at last, and there was an almost bewildered remonstrance in her low, astonished tone. “My dear Mr. Loring!”

“One moment,” he interposed quickly. “Of course, I don’t ask you to look upon it as anything but a question of expediency and mutual goodwill and esteem. We are both of us very well aware that London is not Arcadia! You won’t consider it brutal frankness on my part, I’m sure, if I tell you that from a financial point of view our positions are not unequal. I have been exceptionally fortunate lately, and I can offer you an income of about five thousand a year. And if a man’s assistance and support counts for something in your life, as I hope it may——”

Mrs. Romayne interrupted him. With all the tact and practicality of a woman of the world, she had mastered her amazement and was mistress of the situation. She spoke kindly and composedly, with just that touch of delicate concern which the occasion demanded.

“Don’t say any more, please; it is really quite impossible.”

A sudden flash of surprise passed across Marston Loring’s face, and he paused a moment, his keen eyes fixed scrutinisingly on her face. He was trying to detect there some signs of that coquetry or affectation of reluctance which he believed must surely underlie her words. His scrutiny failed to detect anything of the kind, however, and an unpleasant glitter came into his eyes.

“Impossible is a rather curt word,” he said. “May I ask you to amplify it?”

He saw the colour rise beneath her paint as she answered:

“I have not the faintest intention of marrying, in the first place. And even if there were not innumerable other reasons against what you propose, I’m afraid I have no fancy for making myself ridiculous! Oh, of course I am well aware”—she laughed a little—“that in my capacity of silly old mother I am as ridiculous as any woman need be! But really, I cannot add another farcical part to that farcical rÔle.”

“And that farcical part would be——?” enquired Loring.

“That of the old wife of a young husband,” she answered, with artificial mirth. “Mr. Loring, I am really sorrier, if you are indeed disappointed, than I can tell you. If you have thought that I encouraged you—— But that is too utterly preposterous! I have considered you simply as my son’s friend—almost my son’s contemporary—a young man with an exceptionally wise and reliable head. Certainly not as a young man who would be foolish enough to want to marry a woman old enough to be his mother.”

Loring’s lips were rather thin, and his eyes glittered dangerously. As she stood looking at him then, with a certain softening excitement about her face, there was no slightest suggestion of age about her; nothing but an admirably developed and preserved maturity. And Loring was a young man in nothing but years.

“That is a mere form of words, if you will pardon my saying so,” he said, and his voice was dangerously quiet and controlled. “There is difference between us in years, of course, but that goes for nothing. In experience, in knowledge of the world, if I may say so, the difference between us is practically nil. I am, as you say, your son’s friend. But is that a reason for refusing me a larger form of the right which you yourself have pressed upon me, to watch over him and to supplement your care where it must inevitably fall short? For Julian’s sake!”

He was confronting her now, looking straight down at her, and as he spoke the last words, all the concern and agitation, partly affected, partly real, with which her face had been moved, vanished before a set expression of unalterable resolution.

“For Julian’s sake,” she said, in a low, decisive voice, “it is impossible.”

He stood for a moment watching her, all the evil of his face standing out in intense relief, and then he made a slight, cold gesture of acquiescence.

“May I take you back into the large room?” he said.

She held out her hand to him with an eager gesture of apology and appeal.

“We are friends still?” she murmured. And the murmur was almost pathetically genuine in its anxiety. “It makes no difference?”

Loring’s mouth was not good to look at as he answered in a tone absolutely destitute of expression:

“Certainly not!”