Marston Loring was the man addressed, and he shot a keen, considering glance at the speaker—Miss Pomeroy. The fact that her eyes had noticed Julian when his quick ones had not, trivial as it was, was not without its significance to the man whose stock-in-trade, so to speak, was founded on clever estimate and appreciation of trifles. Was Miss Pomeroy not so entirely unobservant a nonentity as she was supposed to be, he asked himself, not for the first time; or was there another reason for her quickness in this instance?
“So it is!” he said. “Hullo, old fellow!”
Julian came eagerly up to the group as it paused for him on the club steps, and shook hands in his pleasantest manner with Mrs. Pomeroy.
“I do believe it’s a ladies’ afternoon!” he exclaimed gaily. “What luck for me! How do you do?” shaking hands with Miss Pomeroy. “I’d actually forgotten all about it, and I’ve only just come up from Brighton! Loring, you must ask me to join your party, old man! Tell him so, Miss Pomeroy, please!”
Whether strict veracity is to be imputed to a young man who professes unbounded satisfaction at finding fashionable “ladies’ teas” in full swing at his club when he has just come off a journey is perhaps doubtful; but Julian threw himself into the spirit of the moment with a frank gaiety and enthusiasm which was not to be surpassed. The greater number of the ladies who were sipping club tea as if it were a hitherto untasted nectar, and gazing at club furniture as though it were provision for the comfort of some strange animal, were acquaintances of his; and as he moved about among them his passage seemed to be marked by merrier laughs, a quicker fire of the jokes of the moment, and brighter faces than prevailed elsewhere. He was enjoying himself so thoroughly, apparently, that he was unable to tear himself away, and when he left the club at last, he sprang into a hansom, and told the driver to “put the horse along.” He and his mother were dining out together, and he had left himself barely sufficient time to dress.
He ran up the steps, flinging the driver his fare, let himself in with his latchkey, and proceeded to his room up two steps at a time. When he emerged thence, twenty minutes later, in evening dress, he was congratulating himself on having “done the trick capitally, and well up to time.”
He was a little surprised, therefore, as he came downstairs, to find his mother’s maid waiting for him outside the drawing-room door with the information that Mrs. Romayne was already in the carriage; and he ran hastily downstairs, put on his overcoat, and proceeded to join her.
“I’m awfully sorry, dear,” he said, with eager apology. “I thought it was earlier. The fact is, I was awfully late getting in. I found ‘ladies’ teas’ going on at the club—so awfully stupid of me to forget—you might have liked to go—and it was rather good fun. How are you, dear?”
He had let himself into the brougham as he spoke, had shut the door, and seated himself by the figure he could only dimly see sitting rather back in the corner so that little or no light fell on the face. He had kissed his mother, hardly stemming the flood of his eloquence for the purpose; and he now hardly waited for her word or two of reply before he plunged once more into eager, amusing talk. He did not give his mother time to do more than answer monosyllabically, and it followed that her silence did not strike him. He sprang out, when the carriage stopped, to give her his hand, but before he had given his instructions to the coachman, and followed her into the house, she had disappeared into the ladies’ cloak-room. Consequently it was not until she came to him as he waited to follow her into the drawing-room that he really saw her. As his eyes rested on the figure coming towards him, he suddenly saw, not it, but a sweet, white face with wistful eyes looking at him from out of a dingy frame.