“Have you overdrawn your allowance?”
“No, mum. I’ve got such a jolly generous mother, mum!”
“Have you—— Oh! Have you any secrets from your mother?”
The question broke from her in a kind of cry, but she turned it before it was finished into burlesque, and Julian burst into a shout of laughter.
“Not a solitary secret! There, will that do?”
She was looking straight into his face—her own still in shadow—and there was a moment’s pause; almost a breathless pause on her part it seemed; then she broke into a laugh.
“That will do capitally,” she said. “The catechism is over.”
She rose as she spoke, and added a word or two about a note she had to write.
“We may as well go up into the drawing-room if you have finished smoking,” she said. “It is an invitation from some friends of the Pomeroys—a dinner. By-the-bye, don’t you think Miss Pomeroy a very pretty girl?”
Julian’s response was rather languid, but his mother did not press the point. She turned away to replace the screen on the mantelpiece, and as she did so a thought seemed to strike her.