“Abominable, isn’t it?” she said, pouring out her words as fast as they would come, and without waiting for any answers. “Such a trial! I suppose I shall have to go in for Turkish baths or something horrible of that sort. And how is everybody? How is that wicked young man of yours, Mrs. Romayne? I heard of his goings on at the Ponsonbys’! By-the-bye, do tell him that Hilda Newton is engaged to be married. So good for him! No doubt he thinks she is pining away. A very good match, too--young Compton; rich and good-looking; rather a fool, but don’t tell Master Julian that.” Master Julian’s mother was smiling so charmingly that it was with some difficulty that Mrs. Halse, who, with the assistance of Miss Newton, had guessed the substance of the conversation which had actually taken place between the mother and son in the railway carriage during their journey from Norfolk, had some slight difficulty in restraining the ejaculation, “Cat!” “Really!” was the suave answer. “Miss Newton is really engaged, and so well. So glad! Such a charming girl! Yes, I’ll tell Julian, certainly. His heart will be broken--temporarily. Fortunately his fancies are as ephemeral as they are numerous. Good-bye! So glad to have seen you.” She pressed Mrs. Halse’s hand cordially as she spoke, and pursued her graceful way to the door. Julian was dining out again that night, and her lonely evening apparently affected his mother’s nerves. At any rate, Julian received a message the next morning--a Sunday--to the effect that she had slept badly and was resting, but would see him at lunch, and at lunch-time accordingly she appeared. She laughed at his half-careless, half-affectionate enquiries, calling herself quite rested and quite well. And after his first enquiries as to her health, Julian relapsed into rather moody silence--silence with which his mother had apparently nothing to do. That tone of independence which had come to him, and which was sometimes hardly perceptible, could hardly have been more strongly evidenced than by his one or two spasmodic efforts to pass out of his own life--where something was evidently not to his liking--into the life they shared. Such a state of things is always more or less disturbing to the mental atmosphere; more or less according to the sensitiveness of the person upon whom it acts; and as Mrs. Romayne sat opposite Julian the furtive glances which she cast at his moody, preoccupied face became more and more anxious and restless. A tentative, uncertain tone in her manner of dealing with him, which had developed during the last month, increased moment by moment; and her voice and laugh as she chatted to him--ignoring his indifferent reception of her little bits of news--became moment by moment more forced and unreal. That her nerves and her self-control were not so reliable as they had once been was evident in the fact that she took refuge--as was not unusual with her in these days--in painful exaggeration.