The jest, dragged in as it was, had a forced ring about it; perhaps it bore all-unconscious testimony to the oppressively insistent power of that haunting questioning of yesterday. But Julian, knowing nothing of this, was simply conscious of ever-increasing irritation from her voice and manner.
“I don’t see what business my allowance is of Dennis Falconer’s!” he said gruffly. And then side by side with his growing sense of his mother’s artificiality, there grew in him an overmastering desire for another woman’s presence—a simple presence, to which social subtleties and affectation were unknown. Why hadn’t Clemence met him yesterday evening? How could he tell when he would see her again? To-morrow he could not meet her. Then his reflections paused, as it were, absorbed in a vague sense of discomfort and discontent, until a fresh thought stole across them; a thought which presented itself by no means for the first time that day.
Why should he not go and see her this afternoon? After all, why should he not? He never had done such a thing, but—did it mean so much as it seemed to mean? And if it did? Why not?
“I don’t see either,” his mother said; and Julian smiled grimly as he thought how little she knew the question she was answering. “It’s our business, isn’t it? And it’s my private business to find you a nice wife—not yours at all, you understand.” These last words with a laugh. “She must be pretty, I suppose—good style at any rate—and she must be rich, and she must have the makings of a good hostess in her. Really, I think I must begin to look her out. Don’t you think——”
Julian interrupted her. He was hardly conscious that he was doing so; he had hardly heard her words; but the atmosphere of the perfectly appointed room, with its artificial mistress, had suddenly become absolutely intolerable to him, and he had answered his own question suddenly and recklessly.
“I’m going out, mother,” he said. “I’ve got some calls to make, and it’s getting late. You won’t go out this afternoon, I know. Good-bye.”
He was gone almost before she had realised that he was going.
To Mrs. Romayne it was a repetition of their first evening at home together in the autumn. The nervous excitement under which she had been acting died suddenly away, and she realised what had happened; realised it, and sat for a moment staring at it, as it were, her hands clenched on the tablecloth, her face haggard and drawn.
To Julian it was no repetition. It was a new departure, sudden and unpremeditated, and as he walked away from his mother’s house his face was alight and eager with excitement and determination.