“Mr. Romayne’s name is public property in connection with the affair, then, in London, since yesterday morning?” The words, spoken in a hard, thin, woman’s voice, came to Falconer’s ear as the door opened; and the waiter’s announcement, “A kinsman of madame,” passed unheeded as he moved hastily forward into the room. It was a small private sitting-room, evidently by no means the best in the hotel. With his back to the door stood a young man in an attitude of professional calm, rather belied by a certain nervous fingering of the hat he held, which seemed to say that he found his position a somewhat embarrassing one. Facing him, and indirectly facing the door, stood Mrs. Romayne. She was dressed in black from head to foot, but the gown she wore was one that she had had in her wardrobe--very fashionably made, with no trace of mourning about it other than its hue. Emphasized, perhaps, by the incongruity of her conventional smartness, but a result of the past twenty-four hours independent of any such emphasis, all the more salient points of her demeanour of the day before seemed to be accentuated into hardness. Her perfect self-possession, as she faced the young man before her--it was the man she had noticed on the previous morning questioning the waiter--was hard; her perfect freedom from any touch of emotion or agitation was hard; her face, a little sharpened and haggard, and reddened slightly about the eyelids, apparently rather from want of sleep than from tears, was very hard; her eyes, brighter than usual, and her rather thin mouth, were eloquent of bitterness, rather than desolation, of spirit. She turned quickly towards the door as Falconer entered, and looked at him for an instant with an unrecognising stare. Then, as he advanced to her without speaking, and with outstretched hand, something that was almost a spasm of comprehension passed across her face, settling into a stiff little society smile. “It is Dennis Falconer, isn’t it?” she said, holding out her hand to him. “I ought to have known you at once. I am very glad to see you.” “My uncle thought---- We decided yesterday morning----” Dennis Falconer hesitated and stopped. He was thrown out of his reckoning, taken hopelessly aback, as it were, by something so entirely unlike what he had expected as was her whole bearing; though, indeed, he had been quite unconscious of expecting anything. But Mrs. Romayne remained completely mistress of the situation. “It is very kind of you,” she said, with the same hard composure. “It was very kind of my uncle.” She hesitated, hardly perceptibly, and then said, the lines about her mouth growing more bitter, “You have heard?” Falconer bowed his head in assent, and she turned toward the young man, who had drawn a little apart during this colloquy.