Mrs. Romayne had drawn a quick, slight breath of relief at his action, but the breath seemed to suspend itself for an instant on this pause, and the eyes with which she watched his were very bright and intent.
“As your only near relative,” he began with formal gravity, “and as your son’s only near relative, I feel myself bound to take this opportunity of approaching a subject which has been in my thoughts for some time. Any man of ordinary knowledge and experience of the world, having regard only to the most ordinary circumstances, would tell you that so large an allowance as you make your son is not an advisable thing for any young man.”
Mrs. Romayne had listened with her expression veiled and repressed into an intent vigilance, and as he finished a dull flush—which was none the less hot and significant because it had not the vivid intensity of the angry flush of youth—crept into her face, and her eyes glittered. Her tone as she spoke witnessed to a strong self-control, and an intense determination not to abandon her position or to lessen by one jot the distance she had set between them.
“I am sorry you think so!” she said carelessly.
“I think so, emphatically,” he returned. “I should think so for any young man. For William Romayne’s son——”
Mrs. Romayne had been gathering up some papers from the table with light, careless movements; she rose now rather suddenly but still carelessly. What seemed to him almost shameful callousness quickened Falconer into what he thought a righteous disregard for all conventionality.
He too rose, but his movement was no response to hers; rather it seemed to crush and dominate its suggestion of easy dismissal with the implacable austerity of a reality not to be put aside. He stood looking at her, forcing her, by the suddenly asserted superiority of his man’s determination and mental weight, to meet his grave, condemning eyes.
“Does your son know what his father was?” he said in a low, stern voice.
He had forced down the barrier, he had annihilated the distance, and she faced him with glittering eyes, that dull flush all over her face, its mask gone.
“No!” she said, and from her hard, defiant voice, also, all artificiality had dropped away.