Mrs. Romayne’s face did not regain its normal colour as she turned her attention to her other callers, nor did those faint lines about her mouth and eyes disappear. She was particularly charming that afternoon, but always, as she welcomed one set of visitors or parted from another, laughing, talking or listening so gaily, there was a faint, hardly definable air of preoccupation about her. She had a great many visitors, and the afternoon grew hotter as it wore on. When she dressed for dinner that night, finding herself strangely nervous, irritable with her maid, and “on edge altogether,” as she expressed it, she was very definite and distinct in her self-assurances that such an unusual state of things was owing solely to the heat and “those tiresome people”; rather unnecessarily distinct and explicit it would have seemed, since there was apparently no chance of contradiction. The acquaintanceship between Julian and Marston Loring had developed during the past fortnight with surprising rapidity. They had dined together at the club, they had smoked together in Loring’s chambers, and they had met incessantly at dances, “at homes,” or dinners, on all of which occasions Mrs. Romayne had been uniformly gracious to her son’s friend. At a garden-party a few miles out of London, admittedly the greatest failure of the season, when Loring and the Romaynes had walked about together all the afternoon with that carelessness of social obligations which a dull party is apt to engender, the scheme for the present evening had been arranged; Loring adding a preliminary dinner at a restaurant, with himself in the capacity of host to Mrs. Romayne and her son, to the original suggestion that they should go together to the theatre. Julian was in high spirits as they drove off to keep their engagement, but his mother’s responses to his chatter were neither so ready nor so bright as usual. He glanced at her once or twice and then said boyishly: “You look awfully done up, mother!” Mrs. Romayne turned to him quickly, her eyes sparkling angrily, her whole face looking irritable and annoyed. “My dear Julian,” she said sharply, “it’s a very bad habit to be constantly commenting on people’s appearance; especially when your remarks are uncomplimentary. You told me I looked tired the other day. Please don’t do it again!” Such an ebullition of temper was an almost unheard-of thing with Mrs. Romayne, and Julian could only stare at her in helpless astonishment--not hurt, but simply surprised, and inclined to be resentful. He could not realise as a woman might have done the jarred, quivering state of nerves implied in such an outbreak; and he simply thought his mother was rather odd, when a moment later she stretched out her hand hastily, and laid it on his with a quick, tight squeeze. “That was abominably cross, dear!” she said in a voice which shook. “Don’t mind! I am all right now.”