“So it is,” returned Loring drily.
Mrs. Romayne laughed, and dropped the glasses with which she had been coolly surveying the garment in question.
“That was rather obvious, wasn’t it?” she said gaily. “By-the-bye, did you want to see Julian?”
There was a moment’s pause after Loring had replied, pleasantly enough, in the negative, and then Mrs. Romayne looked up at him suddenly, and said:
“It’s frightfully hot in here, don’t you think? Suppose we try one of the less popular rooms?” She stopped a moment, and then added with her most artificial laugh: “Of course, you gather from that that I’m going to victimise you again? Yes; I do want a little quiet talk with you. Who’d be a conspirator?”
There was nothing of the unwilling victim, at least, in Loring’s tone or manner as he deprecated her words. Nor was there either reluctance or tedium in his face as he followed her through the room. On the contrary, it was almost lighted up by an expression of sudden purpose.
Mrs. Romayne led the way to the almost deserted miniature room, and they began to walk slowly up and down, to all intents and purposes alone together. There seemed to be no particular point to Mrs. Romayne’s desire for a private conference with her fellow-conspirator. She talked about Julian; talked about him carelessly, artificially, but with a persistence which only another mother could have understood; slipping in little questions now and then on all sorts of details connected with that business side of a man’s life, as to which, she said, “women are always so in the dark;” and reverting again and again to her satisfaction and reliance in his mentor.
“It’s rather absurd to quote those ridiculous old proverbs,” she said at last, laughing affectedly, “but isn’t there one, or a fable, or something, about a duck whose chickens—no, a hen whose chickens, it would be, wouldn’t it?—would take to the water, and agitated her awfully because she couldn’t go after them? That’s exactly what I feel like, I assure you. And I look upon you as an exceptionally sensible water-bird who is also at home on the land—a kind of connecting link. Humiliating similes, aren’t they?”
Loring smiled in answer to her laugh. But his tone as he answered her was rather grave.