“Maud Pomeroy!” she said at last, and she seemed to be unconscious of that moment’s interval of silence. “Ah! Well, to tell you the truth, that is not such an extraordinary report, though it hardly represents the fact--at present. Young people will be young people, you know, and they must be allowed their little wilfulnesses!” She also had lowered her voice, though it was high-pitched, and her speech was almost exaggeratedly confidential. Influenced by the tone into which they had thus fallen, Falconer said, meaningly and not unkindly: “You have had to make no more serious allowances, I hope--since?” With a laugh so light and high as to be painfully out of tune, Mrs. Romayne answered him gaily in the negative. One little peccadillo, she said, was not such a very terrible thing in a young man’s record, and she was charmed to say that with that little affair of which they both knew her anxieties on Julian’s account had begun and ended. She held out her hand to Falconer as she finished her assurance, parting with him with her brightest air of society friendliness, and as he wished her good-bye, looking down into the trivial vivacity of her face, Falconer felt himself stirred for the first time by a certain touch of pity for her. Coming upon his softer mood and the comparatively friendly nature of their talk, the eager assurance with which she spoke struck him as being not without pathos. He had no confidence in Julian, and it occurred to him vaguely and with a sense of surprise that if the security so superficially founded should prove false, the blow would be somewhat disproportionate to the lightness of the nature on which it must fall. The next instant he recollected how largely her own actions would have contributed to bring about the blow, and he dismissed her sternly from his thoughts as she passed out of the room. Mrs. Romayne went straight home, though she had numerous calls on her list for the afternoon; her eyes were even desperately bright and defiant; and that same evening Marston Loring received a note asking him to come and see her on the following day. He found her waiting for him in the drawing-room at the hour she had appointed, and she plunged into the matter in hand with an affectation of spontaneous confidence which was most effective.