“Julian, I met Fräulein Schmitz to-day!”
He met her eyes for a moment, his own questioning and uncomprehending; then gradually there stole over his face recollection, vague at first, which became as it grew definite rather shamefaced, rather annoyed, and rather amused.
“Oh!” he said; his tone was light and daring enough, though a touch of genuine shame and embarrassment lurked in it. “Oh, I call that hard lines!”
He was smiling daringly into her face with an acceptance of the situation that was perfectly frank. His mother’s hands, as they rested on the arm of his chair, were tightly wrung together, and her eyes never stirred from his face.
“Why?” she said rather hoarsely, “why did you?”
He laughed, shrugging his shoulders and throwing out his hands with a graceful foreign movement.
“I was rather a culprit, you see,” he said. “I only spent those few hours in Alexandria, and I never gave a thought to your commission. And I felt such a brute about it that I wasn’t up to confessing!”
It was the truth and the whole truth, and it conveyed itself as such. Mrs. Romayne knelt there for a moment more, looking into his eyes, her own wide and strained; and then she rose heavily and slowly to her feet. There was a pause.
The silence was broken by Julian, evidently with a view to changing a subject on which he could hardly be said to show to conspicuous advantage.
“You’re going to write to Falconer, I suppose? You wouldn’t like to do it to-night, dear, would you? He would get the letter in better time if it was posted the first thing. You could do it at my table there!”