“You have a son here, I believe?” he said, with ponderous interest. “I should greatly like to make his acquaintance.”
Mrs. Romayne laughed.
“I have a son,” she said, “but he is not here, I’m sorry to say. He is hard at work just at present. Ah!” she broke off with an exclamation of surprise. “I see a friend of mine over there! I must go and speak to her.” And with a bow and a smile to her admirer, she broke off the conversation which had, perhaps, seemed longer to one party than to the other, and moved across the lawn to where Hilda Compton was standing watching her with an uncertain but not particularly pleasant expression on her pretty face.
“Are you staying in the neighbourhood?” said Mrs. Romayne prettily, when they had shaken hands. She was apparently entirely oblivious of something cold and disagreeable in the younger woman’s manner. “Is your husband here?”
Hilda Compton glanced at her with a certain tentative triumph in her eyes.
“No!” she said. “He’s not here. I’m staying on a house-boat, but he is kept in town over some troublesome business!”
She paused, and then, as Mrs. Romayne made a rather patronising gesture of sympathy, that gleam of triumph strengthened into something distinctly malicious. Hilda Compton had never forgotten or forgiven that moment in the Norfolk garden twelve months ago. It had been no part of her policy to resent it when such resentment must necessarily have rebounded to her own disadvantage; she had accepted Mrs. Romayne’s society friendliness during the past season with just such a manner as might sting but could not, in very self-respect, be impugned by the elder woman; a manner cleverly tinged with that deference which points the sense of superiority with which a certain type of girl recognises the fact that the present is to her, and not to the previous generation. But she had hoped always that the day might come when she would find herself in a position to take more active measures, and she felt, now, that even what she knew to be a slight breach of conjugal faith would be venial, if it would straighten what she would have called her “score” against Julian Romayne’s mother.
“Yes, it’s rather a bore!” she said. “City business, you know! Don’t you think it’s very foolish of men to speculate, Mrs. Romayne? Of course I haven’t a quarter of your experience, but I think so. They always seem to get into trouble of some sort! But you know more than I do about this affair, no doubt, since Mr. Romayne is mixed up in it, and he’s such a devoted son. Husbands don’t tell one much, I find!”
Self-command is a wonderful thing, even when it originates in no higher motive than the instinct of a woman of the world for the retention of her society demeanour. Mrs. Romayne’s lips were ashen and her fingers were clenched round the sunshade she held until her rings cut into them, but she faced Hilda Compton steadily, and with a mechanical smile, her eyes, a little dull and contracted, meeting the girl’s pretty, unfeeling ones. Hilda Compton noticed the change of colour even behind the artificial tinting, and rejoiced at the slip of the tongue by which her foolish young husband had put such a weapon into her hand. If only she had succeeded in making Howard tell her more, instead of making him lose his temper! She reflected, however, that perhaps the truth was not so very bad after all, and hints might possibly sound worse than the actual facts.
“Do tell Mr. Romayne, from me, that I hope he hasn’t done anything very shocking!” she said, with a laugh. “I wanted Howard to tell me just what it was, but he would not. Isn’t it funny how men seem to lose their heads altogether when they get on to that silly Stock Exchange? The last men one would expect, too! Who would have thought of Mr. Romayne’s getting into trouble of that kind?”