At about noon on a bright, cold October day he got out of a hansom at twenty-two, Queen Anne Street, with a certain cynical expectancy on his face. The weeks which had passed since Mrs. Romayne and Julian returned to town on that close September day had brought on winter, and had settled winter society fairly into its grooves; and on the previous evening Marston Loring and Mrs. Romayne had met at a dinner-party. Mrs. Romayne had been alone. To enquiries made for her son, and regrets at his absence, she had replied, with a gaiety which became absolutely feverish as the evening wore on, that he was unfortunately engaged. Throughout the evening, as though some kind of strain were acting upon her self-control, all the characteristics of her demeanour towards Loring had been slightly exaggerated. Loring had detected, before he had exchanged two sentences with her, that she was not herself; that she was unstrung and nervous; and arguing on totally false premises he had come to a totally false conclusion. She had pressed him restlessly about the commission he was doing for her, and he had twisted it this morning into an excuse for coming to see her when he knew she would be at home. “It is an unheard-of hour, I know,” he said, as she rose to receive him with an exclamation of surprise. “But I want a little more detail, and one or two measurements, before I can execute your orders satisfactorily.” He had seen before she spoke that the weakness of the night before, from whatever cause it had arisen, had passed away; the lines about her face were set into a determined, uncompromising cheerfulness, and her voice as she spoke conveyed the same impression. “It is more than kind of you, and I am very glad to see you,” she said. “I’m always glad to see Julian’s friend, you know.” The last words with a laugh. “You don’t happen to have met him this morning, I suppose?” Loring signified, without a hint of sarcasm, that it was more common not to meet the man one would wish to meet in the Temple than to meet him, and Mrs. Romayne laughed again. “I know,” she said. “But one gets an absurd impression that men doing the same thing in the same place must be always coming across one another. It’s very ridiculous, of course. You and he have always had a knack of finding one another out, though. I suppose you are quite one another’s greatest chums, aren’t you? Is ‘chum’ still the word, by-the-bye?” “I believe so,” returned Loring carelessly. “Yes,” he continued in a different tone, “I don’t know when I’ve taken to any one as I took to Julian.” There was a little gesture, half-mocking, half involuntary, which accepted the words as a personal compliment, and Mrs. Romayne said with a smile: