Julian was in high spirits as they drove off to keep their engagement, but his mother’s responses to his chatter were neither so ready nor so bright as usual. He glanced at her once or twice and then said boyishly:
“You look awfully done up, mother!”
Mrs. Romayne turned to him quickly, her eyes sparkling angrily, her whole face looking irritable and annoyed.
“My dear Julian,” she said sharply, “it’s a very bad habit to be constantly commenting on people’s appearance; especially when your remarks are uncomplimentary. You told me I looked tired the other day. Please don’t do it again!”
Such an ebullition of temper was an almost unheard-of thing with Mrs. Romayne, and Julian could only stare at her in helpless astonishment—not hurt, but simply surprised, and inclined to be resentful. He could not realise as a woman might have done the jarred, quivering state of nerves implied in such an outbreak; and he simply thought his mother was rather odd, when a moment later she stretched out her hand hastily, and laid it on his with a quick, tight squeeze.
“That was abominably cross, dear!” she said in a voice which shook. “Don’t mind! I am all right now.”
But she was not all right, and though she made a valiant effort to collect her forces and appear so, her gaiety throughout dinner was strained and forced. Loring’s quick perception realised instantly that something was wrong with her, and his demeanour under the circumstances was significant at once of the work of the past fortnight, and of his individual capacity for turning everything to his own ends. With a tacit assumption of a certain right to consider her, he evinced just such a delicate appreciation of her mood as gave her a sense of rest and soothing, without letting her feel for a moment that he found anything wanting in her. His pose was always that of a man to whom youth or even early manhood, with its follies and inexperiences, is a thing of the dim past, and he used that pose now to the utmost advantage; combining a mental equality with the mother with an actual equality with the son as his contemporary in a manner which made him seem in a very subtle way equally the friend of each. He talked, of course, almost exclusively to Mrs. Romayne, never, however, failing to include Julian in the conversation; and he so managed the conversation as to take all its trouble on his own shoulders, and give Mrs. Romayne little to do but listen and be entertained.
He succeeded so well that the dinner-hour, by the time it was over, had done the work of many days in advancing his dawning intimacy with Mrs. Romayne.
She felt better, she told herself as they entered the theatre—told herself with rather excessive eagerness and satisfaction, perhaps because of something within, of which the quick, nervous movement of her hands as she unfastened her cloak was the outward and visible sign.
The curtain was just going up as they seated themselves, and during the first quarter of an hour the two seats to their left remained empty. Then Mrs. Romayne, whose attention was by no means chained to the stage, became aware of the slow and difficult approach of a flow of loudly-whispered and apologetic conversation, combined with the large person of a lady; and a moment or two later she was being fallen over by Mrs. Halse, who was followed by a girl, and who continued to explain the situation fluently and audibly, until a distinct expression of the opinion of the pit caused her to subside temporarily.