A pause followed, and then Loring continued with an easy seriousness which was very reassuring:
“I am very glad to know all this, for it gives me a key, without which I might have blundered considerably! To return confidence for confidence, and to assure you that I really have some power to help you, I will say that I made a little discovery about Julian yesterday which perplexed me a good deal. I shall know now how to act. If he must speculate——”
He was interrupted. The daintily coloured face before him changed suddenly and terribly; a ghastly reality that lay behind that expression of carelessness seemed on the instant to crash through all veils and masks as Mrs. Romayne rose to her feet with a hoarse cry, her face drawn and working, her hands stretched out as though to ward off something unendurably horrible.
“No!” she gasped, and she was absolutely fighting and struggling for breath, as though something clutched at her throat. “Not that! oh, good heavens, not that! You must stop it! You must prevent it. He must not! He must not! Do you hear me? He must not!”
There are some natures which not even contact with throbbing, vibrating reality can touch or thrill, and Loring, surprised, indeed, had risen also, cynical, imperturbable, and cool-headed as usual.
“By Jove!” he said to himself critically. “Who would have thought she had it in her?” The choked, agonised voice stopped abruptly, and he met her eyes, wild and fierce in their desperate command, and said quickly and soothingly:
“I will do anything you wish, I assure you! You have only to speak! I am grieved beyond all words to have distressed you so! I had no idea——”
A hoarse laugh broke from Mrs. Romayne, and she turned away with a strange gesture almost as though it were herself she derided, and Loring was forgotten by her, clasping her hands fiercely over her face. Loring paused a moment and then went on smoothly:
“There is nothing to disturb you, I assure you, in what I was going to say. Most young men have a turn for dabbling in speculation at some time or other, and though I know some ladies have a horror of it, I don’t think you would find that there is much foundation for that horror.” He stopped somewhat abruptly. He had suddenly remembered that he was speaking to the widow of William Romayne, of whose final collapse he knew the outline. He looked at the woman before him with her hidden face, her figure rigid and tense from head to foot, and thought to himself callously how curious these survivals of emotion were. She did not move or speak, and he went on with a tone of delicate sympathy:
“No doubt, if you really think it well to stop it with a high hand, it can be done! I ought to say that I have rather broken confidence in revealing Julian’s doings, as he is very anxious that you should not think him dissatisfied or ungrateful, and did not wish you to hear of them.” A shiver shook the bowed figure from head to foot. “I’m afraid I thought more of reassuring you than of him! I thought that if you knew that he and I were in the same affair, and that he would act solely on my advice, you would, perhaps, feel happier about him!”