She was leading the way toward the house, and her little high-pitched laugh eliciting only a monosyllabic response from the girl at her side, she resumed what was practically a monologue, carried on with a suavity and ease which was perhaps over-elaborated by just a touch. Her farewells, which followed almost immediately on their arrival at the house, when a little bustle of departure ensued--in which Miss Newton took no part, that young lady having promptly disappeared--were characterised by the same manner, about which there was also a little touch of suppressed excitement. It was not until she and Julian were alone together in a first-class carriage of the London express that her gay words and laughs ceased, and she let herself sink back in her corner, unfolding a newspaper with a short, hardly audible sigh of relief. A very slight and indefinable change had come to Mrs. Romayne’s face in the course of the last two months. It had been perceptible in her animation, and was still more perceptible in her repose. The lines about her face which had needed special influences to bring them into prominence during the winter were always plainly perceptible now; and they gave her face a very slightly careworn look, which was emphasized by the expression of her eyes and mouth. The eyes had always a slightly restless look in them in these days; even now, as she read her paper, or appeared to read it, there was no concentration in them; and every now and then they were lifted hastily, almost furtively, over the paper’s edge. The mouth was at once weaker and more determined; weaker, inasmuch as it had grown more sensitive, more nervously responsive to the movements of her restless eyes; and more determined, as though with the expression of a constant mental attitude. There was a good deal of indecision in her face, and its expression varied slightly, but incessantly, as she fixed her eyes anew on the printed words before her after each fleeting glance at the boyish face outlined by the cushions opposite. She laid down her paper at last, with a little deliberate rustle, apparently intended to attract attention, and as she did so her face assumed its ordinary superficial vivacity; an expression which harmonised less well with the rather sharpened features than it had done three months before. “A good novel, Julian?” she said airily, smothering a yawn as she spoke, and indicating with a little gesture of her head the book in Julian’s hand. Julian had been holding the book in his hand, ever since they left the little Norfolk station from which they had started, but he had scarcely turned a page. His features were composed into an expression of boyish resentment, about which there was that distinct suggestion of sullenness which is the usual outward expression of the hauteur of youth. As his mother spoke he flushed hotly with angry self-consciousness. “Not particularly,” he said, without lifting his eyes.