Her voice was lightness itself, and that very lightness, with the almost unusual loquacity with which she had received him, seemed to witness to the presence in her mind of a recollection which she was determined to ignore--the recollection of their last interview, in that very room. There was an air about her of having entrenched herself behind a barrier which she defied him to pass; of being resolute this time against surprise, or against any other method of attack. “It is very grave!” said Falconer, and in contrast with her voice, his rang with stern heaviness. “I must ask you to prepare yourself for bad news!” “Bad news!” she echoed sharply, as her eyes, fixed on his face, grew suddenly bright and keen. “Oh--money, I suppose?” Her voice jarred a little, though she spoke very lightly. “No!” said Falconer. His tone was absolutely uncompromising. On his unsympathetic and unimaginative mind the effect of her manner was to obliterate his sense of pity beneath a consciousness of the retributive justice of the moment before her. “Not money?” she said, with a little, unreal laugh. “Well, that’s a comfort, at any rate.” Her hand had clenched itself suddenly round the arm of her chair on his monosyllable, and now she paused a moment, almost as though her breath had failed her, before she said, with affected carelessness: “And if not--what?” Her back was towards the light, and Falconer could not see her face. “I will answer your question, if you will allow me, with another,” he said. “Have you noticed anything unusual in the course of the past month--or more--in the conduct of your son?” In the instant’s dead silence that followed a slight creaking sound made itself audible and then died away. The clenched hand on the bar of Mrs. Romayne’s chair had passed slowly round it with such intense pressure as to produce the sound. Then she answered him, as he had previously answered her, in a monosyllable. “No!” she said. There was a desperate effort in her voice at carelessness, at nonchalance, at astonishment; but it was penetrated through and through with all her past antagonism towards, and defiance of, the man before her accentuated into fierce repudiation. Falconer’s voice, as he answered her, seemed to confront that defiance with inexorable fate. “That is almost unfortunate,” he said sternly. “In that case, I fear that what I have to tell you must fall with double and treble severity, as coming upon you unawares. Will you not think again? Has he not been absent from home a good deal? Have his absences been satisfactorily accounted for? Have you ever proved”--he paused, laying stress upon the last word--“have you ever proved such accounts, as given by himself, correct?”