“One may allude to it confidentially!” returned Mrs. Romayne, and her tone was rather high-pitched and uneven. “Not otherwise, I am sorry to say—at present! Did Julian say anything about it?” Her tone as she asked the question was carelessness itself, but her fingers were tightly clenched round her handkerchief as she waited for the answer.
“A word or two!” returned Loring. “I inferred that it was only a question of time. Has it been going on long?”
“All the winter!” she answered, and again there was that little forced laugh. “You see, unfortunately, ‘she’ has been away! I had hoped that it would have come off before she went away, but it didn’t!”
She stopped rather abruptly; and Loring, watching her keenly, said:
“You think it is time he should marry?”
“I think—well, yes, I suppose I do! Don’t you agree with me? You young men are so apt to get into mischief, you know!”
“I suppose I can hardly deny the general principle,” answered Loring with a slight smile, “though it is some time since I have been a young man in any practical sense! But as to Julian, I hardly know——”
“But you must know!” returned Mrs. Romayne quickly, and with an affected laugh. “And you must know, in the first place, that I’m relying on you for a good deal of co-operation—oh, of course, not in these delicate affairs!”
A certain shade of attention—just that attention which might become gravely or gaily sympathetic according to the demand made upon him—appeared in Loring’s manner. He replied to her last words with a gesture of mock deprecation which answered the tone in which they were spoken; but a quiet, reliable interest touched his voice as he spoke, which seemed to respond rather to the possibilities of the situation.
“You have only to command me!” he said.