Her bright little flow of talk stopped at last, however; and Julian making no attempt to fill the gap, there was total silence. It was broken again by Mrs. Romayne, and she was talking now, evidently, for talking’s sake, as though she was no longer capable of weighing her words; but, in her intense desire to penetrate the vague atmosphere which she could not challenge, was making her advances blindly. “I met Mrs. Halse yesterday,” she began gaily. “Did I tell you? Fortunately I only encountered her for a few moments, or I doubt whether I should be alive to tell the tale.” She paused, and Julian smiled absently. They had finished lunch, and he had risen and strolled to the fire with a cigarette, and he was thinking vaguely, as her voice broke in upon his meditations--or perhaps rather feeling than thinking--that his mother was rather artificial. All society women were artificial, he had thought once or twice lately; and the word was acquiring a new significance to him. “She bestowed an immense amount of conversation upon me in the course of those few minutes!” continued Mrs. Romayne in the sprightly tone which her son was beginning to hear for the first time as something jarring. “Amongst other things she told me a little piece of news which will interest you.” “Yes?” said Julian indifferently. A fellow didn’t always want to be entertained, he was saying to himself irritably; it was a nuisance. His thoughts had wandered completely, and he was going over a fruitless hour which he had spent alone walking up and down a certain side-street off Piccadilly, on the previous evening--an hour which was accountable for his gloomy humour this morning--when he became aware of his mother’s voice saying with insistent gaiety: “Well, sir, aren’t you broken-hearted?” Julian started and made a futile effort to realise what his mother had said. The necessity for the effort and its failure proved by no means soothing to him, and he said rather impatiently: “I’m awfully sorry, mother, but I’m afraid I didn’t hear.” “He didn’t hear!” echoed Mrs. Romayne in mock appeal to heaven and earth to witness the fact. She, too, had made an effort and a failure, and the result with her was to increase her nervous recklessness. “Five weeks ago he was ready to eat his poor little mother because she prevented his proposing to this young woman, and now when I tell him she’s engaged he doesn’t even hear! Perhaps you’ve forgotten Hilda Newton’s very existence, my lord! Who is her successor?” Julian flushed angrily, and his good-looking face took a sullen expression. “She’s not likely to have a successor, as you call it,” he said. “A fellow doesn’t care to have that kind of thing happen twice.” His mother broke into a thin, nervous laugh.