“I am expecting him every day, I am delighted to say!” answered Mrs. Romayne, with a little conventional gush of superficial enthusiasm. “Really, you have no idea how forlorn I am without him! We are quite absurdly devoted to one another, as I often tell him, stupid fellow. But I always think—don’t you?—that a man is much better out of the way during the agonies of furnishing, so I insisted on his making a little tour while I plunged into the fray. He was very anxious to help, of course, dear fellow. But I told him frankly that he would be more hindrance than help, and packed him off—and made a great baby of myself when he was gone. Of course I have had to console myself by making our little place as perfect as possible, as a surprise for him! You know how these things grow! One little surprise after another comes into one’s head, and one excuses oneself for one’s extravagance when it’s for one’s boy.”
“Are you thinking of settling in London?” enquired Lady Bracondale.
She was unbending moment by moment in direct contradiction of her preconceived determination. Mrs. Romayne was so bright and so unconscious. She ran off her pretty maternal platitudes with such careless confidence, that iciness on Lady Bracondale’s part would have assumed a futile and even ridiculous appearance.
“Yes!” was the answer. “We are going to settle down a regular cosy couple. It has been our castle in the air all the time his education has been going on. He is to read for the bar, and I tell him that he will value a holiday more in another year or two, poor fellow. But I’m afraid I bore about him frightfully!” she added, with another laugh. “And it is rather hard on him, poor boy, for he really is not a bore! I think you will like him, Lady Bracondale. I remember young men always adored you!”
Lady Bracondale smiled, absolutely smiled, and said graciously—graciously for her, that is to say:
“You must bring him to see me! I should like to call upon you if you will give me your card.”
Mrs. Romayne was in the act of complying—complying with smiling indifference, which was the very perfection of society manner—when Mrs. Pomeroy, evidently moved solely by the impetus of the excited group of ladies of which she was the serenely smiling centre, bore cheerfully down upon them.
“Perhaps we ought to vote about the fancy dress before we separate this afternoon,” she suggested, “or shall we talk it over a little more at the next meeting? Perhaps that would be wiser. Mrs. Romayne——”
She looked invitingly at Mrs. Romayne as if for her opinion on the subject, and the invitation was responded to with that ever-ready little laugh.
“Oh, let us put it off until the next meeting,” she said. “I am ashamed to say that I really must run away now. But at the next meeting I promise faithfully to be here at the beginning and stay until the very end.”