“Suppose you come to the club with me?” suggested Loring carelessly, as Julian received his mother’s announcement of her intentions rather blankly. “What do you say to a game of billiards?” “All right,” responded Julian. “Thanks, old fellow. It was only that I told Miss Newton we were coming on. Isn’t she a jolly girl, mother?” Mrs. Romayne smiled. “Very pretty indeed,” she said lightly. “It’s a sad pity you’re such an ineligible fellow, isn’t it?” And Loring, as the carriage drove off, said to himself admiringly: “What a wonderfully clever woman!” Reaction from a heavy strain--even, apparently, if it is only the strain of combating exhaustion engendered by heat--is a terrible thing. When Mrs. Romayne got out of her carriage after her long drive, her face was haggard and drawn. She passed into the house, gathered up mechanically, and without a glance, two letters waiting for her on the hall-table; told the maid who was waiting for her that she might go to bed, and went up into the drawing-room. There was a low chair by a little table covered with dainty, useless paraphernalia, which she particularly affected. She sat down in it now, almost unconsciously as it seemed, without even loosening her cloak, and with a long, low sigh; the moments passed, and still she sat there, a curious grey pallor about her face, her eyes gazing straight before her as though they were looking into the future or the past. At last, as if by a sudden fierce effort of will, she roused herself and began to tear open the letters still in her hand as if with a desperate instinct towards occupying her thoughts. Her eyes fell on the letter by this time open in her hand, and she read it almost unconsciously, taking in the sense gradually as she read: “DEAR COUSIN HERMIA, “I have just heard to my great sorrow of the death of our old friend Thomson, and I think it right to let you know of it. I believe I need not remind you that on any future occasion on which the help of your now, unfortunately, sole trustee may be necessary, you will find me entirely at your service. “Faithfully yours, “DENNIS FALCONER.” With a sudden fierce gesture, of which her small white fingers looked hardly capable, Mrs. Romayne crushed the letter in her hand and lifted her head. “To be thrown upon him!” she said in a curious, breathless tone. “To have to come into contact--close contact, personal contact--with him!” CHAPTER XII The season, as Mrs. Romayne had told Dennis Falconer, was to be a short one, and its proceedings were apparently to be regulated on the old principle of a short life and a merry one. Gaieties overtook one another in too rapid succession, and an unusually sunny and breezy May and June, with the inevitable action of such weather on human beings, even under the most artificial conditions, rendered these gaieties a shade more really gay than usual.