“One turn, then, you absurd boy!” she said; and she let him draw her hand through his arm and lead her back into the dancing-room. They went only half-a-dozen times round the room in spite of his protestations against stopping, but Mrs. Romayne was too excellent a dancer and too striking a figure for those turns to pass unnoticed. When she stopped and made him take her, flushed and laughing, out of the room, she was instantly surrounded by a group of men vehemently reproaching her for dancing with her son to the exclusion of so many would-be partners, and laughingly denouncing Julian. “I couldn’t help it!” she protested gaily. “Yes, I know it’s a ridiculous sight, but we are rather ridiculous, we two, you know! Come, Julian, take me home this moment! Let me disappear covered with confusion.” She went swiftly downstairs as she spoke, laughing prettily, and a few minutes later Julian, with a good deal of extraneous and wholly unnecessary assistance, was putting her into her carriage. The whole evening had gone off admirably, Mrs. Romayne said the next morning; repeating the dictum with which she had parted from Julian at night, with less excitement, but with undiminished satisfaction. During the course of the next three or four weeks that satisfaction--a certain genuine and deliberate satisfaction which seemed to underlie the superficial gaiety and brightness of her manner--seemed to grow upon her. The season had begun early, and very gaily, and she and Julian were in great request. It was perhaps as well that little work was expected of the embryo barrister before the winter, for he and his mother were out night after night; welcomed and made much of wherever they went, as so attractive a pair--one of whom was steeped to the finger-tips in knowledge of her world--were sure to be. Mrs. Romayne arranged a series of weekly dinner-parties in the little house at Chelsea, which promised to be, in a small way, one of the features of the season. They were very small, very select, and very cheery; no better hostess was to be found in London, and there was a touch of sentiment about the relation between the hostess and the pleasant young host, which was by no means without charm for the guests.