Julian had that instant entered the room and had paused on the threshold. There is perhaps no type of costume more picturesque in its magnificence than that of the Italian noble of the Middle Ages--this is perhaps the reason why it has been so extensively vulgarised--and Julian’s dress was an admirable specimen of its kind, rich, graceful, and becoming. There was a subtle difference between his bearing and that of his host, though Julian’s demeanour, too, was modern to the finest shade. He wore the dress well, with none of the other man’s awkwardness, but on the contrary with an absolute ease and unconsciousness which implied a certain excited tension of nerve. His face was colourless and very hard; but upon the hardness there was a mask of animation and gaiety which was all-sufficient for the present occasion. “I’m awfully sorry, dear boy!” he said now, lightly and eagerly, and with an exaggerated gesture of deprecation. “It’s horribly late, I know! Give you my word I couldn’t help it! By Jove, what a magnificent thing you’ve made of this!” The other glanced round with a satisfaction which he tried in vain to repress. “Not so bad, is it?” he said carelessly. “Only these fellows are such fools, even the best of them; they always blunder if they can.” With this wholesale condemnation of the workmen among whom, some fifty years ago, his grandfather might have been found, he screwed his eyeglass into his eye, serenely unconscious of the comic effect produced, for the better contemplation of a pretty girl at the farther end of the room. “Lady Pamela looks awfully fit, doesn’t she?” he observed parenthetically; continuing almost in the same breath: “The gardens are the best part, seems to me. Awfully like the real thing, don’t you know!” Julian’s only direct answer was an expressive gesture of appreciation and apology. “Awfully well done!” he said. “Excuse me, dear boy, I see my mother, and she’ll want to know why I’ve not turned up before. I must go and explain.” His companion laughed; the laugh was rather derisive, and the glance he cast on Julian through his eyeglass was stupidly inquisitive and incredulous. “What a fellow you are, Romayne!” he said. “They ought to put you in a glass case and label you the model son.” Another gay, expressive gesture from Julian. “Why not?” he said lightly. “We’re a model pair, you know.” And the next moment he was threading his way quickly across the room. A sudden movement of the crowd had shown him his mother’s figure, and he had realised instinctively that she had seen him. He came up to her with a manner about which there was something indescribably reckless, and made her a low bow of gay and abject apology. “I beg ten thousand million pardons!” he said. “Language fails to express my feelings.”