“This is awfully lucky for me!” he exclaimed. “I want a lady desperately for half a minute, and my mother won’t do. Miss Pomeroy,” turning eagerly to the demure, correct-looking figure standing by Mrs. Pomeroy’s side, “will you come to the other end of the shop with me for half a minute? It would be awfully good of you.”
The words were spoken in a tone of fashionable good-fellowship—the pseudo good-fellowship which passes for the real thing in society—which, as addressed by Julian Romayne to Miss Pomeroy and her mother, was one of the results of his work in connection with the bazaar; and before Miss Pomeroy could answer, Mrs. Romayne interposed. Somebody very frequently did interpose when Miss Pomeroy was addressed. No one ever seemed to expect opinions or decisions from her; perhaps because she was her mother’s daughter; perhaps because of her curiously characterless exterior; while the fact that she had never been known to controvert a statement—in words—doubtless accentuated the tendency of her acquaintance to make statements for her.
“It will be awfully good of you,” Mrs. Romayne said to her now, laughing, “if you are kind enough to help this silly fellow, to insist on his remembering that his mother will be very angry indeed if he is extravagant. I shall have to give up having a birthday, I think.”
Then as Julian, with a gay gesture of repression to his mother, waited for Miss Pomeroy’s answer with another pleading, “It would be ever so good of you,” the girl, with a glance at her mother, said, with a conventional smile, “With pleasure,” and walked away by his side.
Mrs. Pomeroy looked after Julian with an approving smile. He was a favourite of hers.
“Such a nice fellow,” she murmured amiably; and Mrs. Romayne laughed her pretty, self-conscious laugh.
“So glad you find him so,” she said. “Oh, by-the-bye, dear Mrs. Pomeroy, can you tell me anything about a Mr. Marston Loring? He goes everywhere, doesn’t he? I think I have seen him at your house.”
“Oh, yes,” returned Mrs. Pomeroy, as placidly as ever, but with a decision which indicated that she was giving expression to a popular verdict, not merely to an opinion of her own. “He is quite a young man to know. Very clever, and rising. I don’t know what his people were; he has been so successful that it really doesn’t signify, you know. He lives in chambers—I don’t remember where, but it is a very good address.”
“Has he money?” asked Mrs. Romayne.
“I really don’t know,” said Mrs. Pomeroy. “He is doing extremely well at the bar. By the way, they say,” and herewith Mrs. Pomeroy lowered her voice and confided to her interlocutor two or three details in connection with Marston Loring’s private life—the life which in the world no one is supposed to recognise—which might have been considered by no means to his credit. They were not details which affected his society character in any way, however, and Mrs. Romayne only laughed with such slight affectation of reprobation as a woman of the world should show.