“In the other room?” he said. “Well, perhaps I ought just to say how do you do, you know, oughtn’t I? Loring, old fellow, we shall meet again, of course? What are you going to do afterwards? We might go down to the club together? And he must come and dine with us, mustn’t he, mother? Suppose you arrange it!” And with a comprehensive gesture and another, “I’ll just say how do you do, I think!” he disappeared in the crowd. Mrs. Romayne turned with a shrug of her shoulders and a pretty expressive grimace to the two men. “Poor boy!” she laughed. “What a thing it is to be young! And what a tantalising spectacle a wedding must be under the circumstances! A pretty wedding, wasn’t it?” “An ugly wedding would be rather a refreshing change, don’t you think?” suggested Loring. “One has seen a good many pretty ones, if you come to think of it!” “You’re not in the least changed by six months in Africa,” returned Mrs. Romayne, shaking her head at him prettily. “Now, tell me, really, have you had a good time out there?” The question was friendly and interested after a society fashion, but the interest was entirely on the surface, and the little talk that followed about Loring’s experiences was joined in as a matter of course by Lord Garstin. It lasted until Mrs. Romayne said lightly: “And now, I suppose, I ought to follow Julian’s example and ‘just say how do you do, don’t you know!’ I have only seen Mrs. Pomeroy in the distance as yet.” She nodded, and moved away, stopping constantly on her way through the rooms to exchange scraps of conversation until she came to where Mrs. Pomeroy, amiable, inert, and smiling as though she had been sitting there for the last three months, was holding a small court. She welcomed Mrs. Romayne as she had welcomed all comers. “So glad to see you,” she said placidly. “Such a long time! And how are you?” “So immensely pleased to have you back again,” said Mrs. Romayne enthusiastically; there was a ring of genuineness in her voice which the fashionable exaggeration of her speech hardly warranted. “And you really only arrived yesterday? Miss Newton--Mrs. Compton, I mean--was in a dreadful state of mind the other day lest her bridesmaid should fail her. And how is Maud? How sweet she looked! Quite the prettiest of the six. Where is she?” “She was here just now,” returned Maud’s mother, as though that were quite a satisfactory answer to the question, and then as an afterthought she added vaguely: “I think she went to have an ice; your son took her.” “Ah!” said Mrs. Romayne, smiling. “Then there is one perfectly happy person in the house!” Mrs. Pomeroy only smiled with vague blandness; evidently the relations between the Romaynes and the Pomeroys had developed extensively before the departure of the latter for Cannes; and as evidently they were quite undisturbing to Miss Pomeroy’s mother.