The atmosphere was not, again, so close as it had been on the afternoon when Dennis Falconer called on Mrs. Romayne, and it is presumable that the weather must have been responsible for her general unusualness of mood on the evening of that day; for if she was not quite herself on the following morning, the touch of self-compulsion in her brightness was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, and a day or two later it had entirely disappeared. Certainly if constant stir and movement are conducive to good spirits, there was nothing wonderful in Mrs. Romayne’s satisfaction with life. For she had not, as she complained laughingly, a single moment to herself. “It’s a regular treadmill!” she exclaimed gaily one day to Lord Garstin. “I had really forgotten what a terrible thing a London season was!” “It seems to agree with you,” was the answer. “There is one lady of my acquaintance, and only one, who seems to grow younger every day!” “You can’t mean me,” she laughed. “I assure you, I am growing grey with incessantly running after that boy of mine! He is as difficult to catch as any lion of the season. I never see him except at parties!” Julian’s intimacy with Marston Loring had grown apace, and it had led to sundry social consequences which were, his mother said, “so good for him.” Little dinners at the club, to which he had been duly elected; dinners at which he was now guest, now host; jovial little bachelor suppers made up among the very best “sets.” Loring himself was very careful--though he knew better than to make his care perceptible, except in its results--never to allow himself to be placed in the position of a rival to Mrs. Romayne for her son’s time and company. He lost no opportunity of making himself useful and agreeable to Mrs. Romayne; now using pleasantly arrogated rights as Julian’s friend; now his superior brain-power and knowledge of the world; until he gradually assumed the position of friend of the house. But club life necessarily created in Julian interests apart from his mother--interests which she was apparently well content that he should have, so long as his ever-ready chatter to her on the subject revealed that they were all connected with good “sets.” It was furthermore a season of very pretty _débutantes_, a large majority of whom elected to look upon Mr. Romayne as “such a nice boy,” and to exact--or permit--any amount of slavery from him in the matters of fetching and carrying and general attendance. “You’re known to be so profoundly ineligible, you see!” his mother would say to him, laughing. “Nobody is in the least afraid of you, poor boy!” And she looked on with perfect calmness as he danced, and rode, and did church parade; looked on with a calmness which might have been mistaken for indifference, but for the significant fact that she always knew which of his “jolly girls” was in the ascendant for the moment. Miss Newton had gone home on the day following the meeting at the theatre.