“And you believe that she is really gone? That there is nothing more to fear from her?”
It was the same absorbed, intent tone, and her eyes, fixed eagerly on Falconer now, were hard and glittering. The terrible significance of his words, with all the weight of tragedy they held, seemed to have passed her by, to have no existence for her. It was as though the sense in her which should have responded to it was numbed or non-existent. And Falconer, scandalised and revolted, replied sternly:
“I think you need have no anxiety on that score. She has disappeared of her own free will, and your son, upon reflection, will probably be glad to accept so easy a solution of what he doubtless recognises by this time as a troublesome complication.” There was a rigid and utterly antipathetic condemnation of Julian in his voice; he had judged the young man, and sentenced him as vicious to the core, and for all his experience, he held too rigidly to his narrow conception to consider the possible effect upon youth and passion of so sudden and total a thwarting. “My only fear,” he continued, “is that serious injustice has been done. The young woman is by no means the kind of young woman I was led to believe her. I have grave doubts as to whether it was not our duty to enforce a marriage upon your son, instead of negativing the suggestion.”
The words were probably rather more than he would have been prepared to stand to had they been put to a practical issue, and he had spoken them, though he hardly knew it, more from a severe desire to arouse what he called in his own mind “some decent feeling” in the woman to whom he spoke, than from any other reason. From that point of view they failed completely. It was a bright light of triumph that flashed into Mrs. Romayne’s eyes as she said quickly, and in an eager, vibrating tone, which seemed less an answer to him personally than to the bare fact to which he had given words:
“Fortunately there is no more fear of that.”
The tall clock standing in a corner of the room chimed the three-quarters as she spoke, and she started as she heard it.
“It is a quarter to seven,” she said. “And I have people to dinner. You have nothing else to tell me, have you? Nothing to advise?”
“Nothing,” was the grim answer.
“You do not think—would it be a good thing, do you think, to have the girl traced so that we could always be sure?”
“You need take no further trouble in the matter, in my opinion. If you should observe anything in your son’s conduct to revive your uneasiness, the question must, of course, be reconsidered. You will observe him closely, no doubt.”