He paused, and doing so looked with a straighter gaze than heretofore at Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife. She was surpassingly beautiful, fairer than any woman he had seen with his fleshly eyes or dreamed about in such soul as he possessed. Was she stupid? Not one whit for the higher feminine intelligence or the higher feminine culture did Lord Rex care. In society he held it Woman’s duty to supply him, Rex Basire, with straw for his conversational brick-making; hooks and eyes, don’t you know! gleanings from the comic papers, hints at politics, easy openings for unsentimental sentiment. A distinctly stupid woman frightened him. ‘Makes one feel like being on one’s legs for a speech,’ Lord Rex Basire would say.
‘You are looking forward to a long stay in the island, I hope, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’
At the italicised verb Dinah’s eyes turned on her companion with a vague distrust. Then she changed colour. A rose-flush, vivid as sunset on snow, overspread her face. For she thought of Gaston.
‘If you are a friend of my husband’s, I can understand your wishing to keep us here.’
There was a smile on her lips. The stiffness of her manner began visibly to relax.
Lord Rex for a moment was taken aback. Then he plucked up heart of grace. To see a married woman blush like a school-girl at the mention of her husband’s name was a new and puzzling spectacle to him. He could scarcely flatter his vanity that he, personally, was receiving encouragement. Still, Dinah had smiled. And with the burthen of conversation-making resting heavily on him, he was glad enough to follow any cue that might present itself.
‘Friend? I should think so! Best fellow in the world, Arbuthnot—and a man of genius, too; good-all-round sort of man. Never heard a Briton sing French songs as he does. Rather proud of my own accent.’ As Lord Rex progressed in confidence his speech grew more and more elliptic. ‘Sent to Paris in my infancy. Brought up by the Jesuits—there were Jesuits in those days, you know—till I went to Eton. But Arbuthnot puts me in the shade, ra-ther.’
‘Your lordship was brought up by the Jesuits!’
Side by side with many wholesomer qualities, Dinah had inherited not a few of her yeoman forefathers’ prejudices. At the word ‘Jesuit’ she regarded Lord Rex with an interest that had in it almost the tenderer element of pity.
‘I was. You look doubtful, you don’t think the fathers could give one such a Parisian roll of the “r” as your husband’s?’