A very slight and indefinable change had come to Mrs. Romayne’s face in the course of the last two months. It had been perceptible in her animation, and was still more perceptible in her repose. The lines about her face which had needed special influences to bring them into prominence during the winter were always plainly perceptible now; and they gave her face a very slightly careworn look, which was emphasized by the expression of her eyes and mouth.
The eyes had always a slightly restless look in them in these days; even now, as she read her paper, or appeared to read it, there was no concentration in them; and every now and then they were lifted hastily, almost furtively, over the paper’s edge. The mouth was at once weaker and more determined; weaker, inasmuch as it had grown more sensitive, more nervously responsive to the movements of her restless eyes; and more determined, as though with the expression of a constant mental attitude.
There was a good deal of indecision in her face, and its expression varied slightly, but incessantly, as she fixed her eyes anew on the printed words before her after each fleeting glance at the boyish face outlined by the cushions opposite. She laid down her paper at last, with a little deliberate rustle, apparently intended to attract attention, and as she did so her face assumed its ordinary superficial vivacity; an expression which harmonised less well with the rather sharpened features than it had done three months before.
“A good novel, Julian?” she said airily, smothering a yawn as she spoke, and indicating with a little gesture of her head the book in Julian’s hand.
Julian had been holding the book in his hand, ever since they left the little Norfolk station from which they had started, but he had scarcely turned a page. His features were composed into an expression of boyish resentment, about which there was that distinct suggestion of sullenness which is the usual outward expression of the hauteur of youth. As his mother spoke he flushed hotly with angry self-consciousness.
“Not particularly,” he said, without lifting his eyes.
There was a moment’s pause, during which Mrs. Romayne’s eyes were fixed upon him with concentration enough in them now; and then she broke into a light laugh, and leaning suddenly forward laid one of her hands on his.
“Poor old boy!” she said, in a tone half mocking, half sympathising. “It was very hard on you, wasn’t it? It’s a cruel fate that makes young men so ineligible, and girls so pretty, and throws the two perversely together! If you’ve any thought to spare from yourself, sir, though, I think you should bestow a little gratitude upon me for my very timely arrival!”
She laughed again, and in her laugh, as in her voice, there was the faintest possible touch of reality, and that reality was anxiety. Then, as Julian twisted his hand from under hers with a gruff and almost inaudible: “I don’t see that!” she leant back in her seat again with a smile.
“My dear boy,” she said gaily; “it’s a very sad position for you, I admit; but for the present you’re dependent on your mother—not such a very stingy mother, eh, sir? I think you’ll find it will be all right for you, when the right young woman turns up, as no doubt she will some day. Perhaps you’ll find that your mother won’t abdicate so very ungracefully. But, you see, it must be the right young woman!”