“You are a curious pair of friends, too, are you not? Julian”--her voice in uttering the name seemed to have acquired a new tenderness in the past month, and lingered over it now, evidently unconsciously and involuntarily--“Julian is such a boy, and you are--a great deal older than you ought to be.” She shook her head at him with a reproving laugh, and he answered in his most _blasé_ manner: “I’m a man of the world, you see. I knew it all through and through before Julian had left school. I hope you wouldn’t have preferred another boy for his ‘chum’!” There was a daring and a challenge in his tone which made the question personal rather to himself than to Julian; but Mrs. Romayne took it from the other point of view. “Quite the contrary!” she said quickly. “Another boy would not have been at all the thing for him. I am delighted to think that his mentor is a wise one. I rely on you, Mr. Loring, do you know!” She stopped abruptly. The last words, uttered suddenly and involuntarily, had seemed curiously charged with a meaning which could not get itself expressed. She paused an instant and then, half as though she wished to laugh some impression away, half as though she wished the words to have significance, she added: “You’ll remember that, won’t you? Shall we go down and see about the fittings?” She rose as she spoke and led the way down to Julian’s room. The room was already as perfect as might be. Only a great restlessness, an irrepressible and incessant impulse to give pleasure to its occupant, could have dictated further improvements; and as Mrs. Romayne talked and explained, the same restless instinct of service expressed itself in sundry little involuntary touches to trifles about the room--about Julian’s chair and his writing-table. The door-bell rang at length, and her face, over which that new and weaker expression had stolen, hardened suddenly. “I’m afraid I must send you away now!” she said, turning to Loring. “I’ve made an appointment for this morning to get through some bothering business. You understand now just what I want, though, don’t you?” “I think so!” answered Loring reflectively. It would have been strange indeed if he had not understood by this time. “But I’m sorry I must go!” “I’m sorry too!” said Mrs. Romayne lightly. “I hate business, and it loses none of its solemnity, I can assure you, when it is transacted by my connexion, Dennis Falconer. He is my trustee, you know!” Loring smiled. He did not detect anything behind her words, and it struck him always as perfectly natural that Mrs. Romayne and her “connexion” should be somewhat antagonistic. “I should imagine he would be a rather ponderous man of business!” he said. The parlour-maid entered at this moment to announce that Mr. Dennis Falconer was in the drawing-room, and as they left the room Mrs. Romayne turned again to Loring.