The light, high-pitched voice, somewhat thin, as was the characteristic laugh with which the words were spoken, came from directly behind Julian, and as Loring, who had seen her coming, stepped forward to meet her, Mrs. Romayne, with a passing shake of her son’s arm, stretched out her hand with graceful cordiality. “Welcome back, Mr. Loring,” she said. “I thought your first visit would have been to this good-for-nothing boy, but I am very glad to meet you here all the same. Lord Garstin,” she continued, as she turned to shake hands, “I believe you were enquiring after my health? I can’t allow good breath to be wasted in that way! I assure you it has been much ado about nothing, and I am perfectly, ridiculously well!” She laughed as she finished, but a certain strained insistence had grown in her tone as she spoke, as though her desire to impress the fact she stated was strong enough to undermine her control of her voice. But Loring, looking at her, was too fully occupied in criticising her appearance to notice the tone of her voice. There must have been some society fraud at the bottom of her reported illness, he decided, and that was why she was so anxious to pass it over; for certainly he had never seen her look better. She was admirably dressed, and she was very slightly and skilfully “made up”; a condition new to him in her, and one of which Marston Loring emphatically approved in women past their first youth. He told himself, moreover, that either his impression of her had been fainter than the reality, or else she had actually gained in what he could only define to himself--and define roughly and inadequately as he was well aware--as “grip.” There was the faintest flavour of nerve and concentration behind her admirable society manner, which gave it a wonderful piquancy in the eyes of her observer; a flavour which was evidently quite unconscious and involuntary, and had its origin in ingrain character. Loring admired power--of a certain class--in women. In his interest in her expression, and his mental comments on it--determined, as they could not fail to be, by his own character--he was deceived by her cleverly arranged colouring into ignoring the almost painful thinness of her face; nor did he understand how hollow and sunken those glittering eyes would have been less cleverly treated. She replied gaily to Lord Garstin’s gallant reception of her assurance, and then turned again to Loring with an easy interested question on his voyage. “You are not the only returned traveller to-day!” she said, as he answered her. “By-the-bye, Julian, I was on the way to send you into the other room. There is some one there you will like to see!” She smiled significantly up at him, patting his arm as she spoke, and Julian answered with boyish eagerness.