But they did stay a great many other seconds, while Mrs. Halse pressed Julian into the service of the bazaar in all sorts and kinds of capacities, and managed to find out a great deal about his past life in the process. When at last she swooped down upon Maud Pomeroy, metaphorically speaking, as though that eminently decorous young lady had been responsible for the delay, and carried her off in a very tornado of protestation, attended to the front door, as in courtesy bound, by Julian, Mrs. Romayne, left alone in the drawing-room, let her face relax suddenly from its responsive brightness into an unmistakeable expression of feminine irritation and dislike. “Horrid woman!” she said to herself. “Patronises me! Well, she will talk about nothing but Julian all this evening, wherever she may be--and she goes everywhere--so perhaps it has been worth while to endure her.” Then, as Julian appeared again, she said gaily: “My dear boy, they’ve been here an hour, and we shall both be late for dinner! Be off with you and dress!” It was a very cosy little dinner that followed. Mrs. Romayne, as carefully dressed for her son as she could have been for the most critical stranger, was also at her brightest and most responsive. They talked for the most part of people and their doings; society gossip. Mrs. Romayne told Julian all about Mrs. Halse’s bazaar; deriding the whole affair as an excuse for deriding its promoter, but with no realisation of its innate absurdity; and giving Julian to understand, at the same time, that it was “the thing” to be in it; an idea which he was evidently quite capable of appreciating. Dinner over, she drew his arm playfully through hers and took him all over the house. “Let me see that you approve!” she said with a laughing assumption of burlesque suspense. The last room into which she took him was the little room at the back of the dining-room; and as his previous tone of appreciation and pleasure developed into genuine boyish exclamations of delight at the sight of it, the instant’s intense satisfaction in her face struck oddly on her manner. “You like it, my lord?” she said. “My disgraceful extravagance is rewarded by your gracious approval? Then your ridiculous mother is silly enough to be pleased.” She gave him a little careless touch, half shake and half caress, and Julian threw his arm round her rapturously. “I should think I did like it!” he said boyishly. “I say, shan’t I have to work hard here! Mother, what an awfully jolly smoking table!” “Suppose you smoke here now,” suggested Mrs. Romayne, “by way of taking possession? Oh, yes! I’ll stay with you.” She sat down, as she spoke, in one of the low basket-chairs by the fire, taking a little hand-screen from the mantelpiece as she did so. And Julian, with an exclamation of supreme satisfaction, threw himself into a long lounging-chair with an air of general proprietorship which sat oddly on his youthful figure; and proceeded to select and light a cigar.