It was seldom Dinah’s policy to discover her feelings by speech. So much worldly wisdom she had learnt, through most unworldly forbearance towards Gaston. Her complexion showed one of its over-quick changes, her mouth fell. But she spoke not. That there must be deviation from truth somewhere, she divined, with a bitter personal sense of humiliation. But where? She shrank from the possible answer to this question.
A good-humoured epitome of the dinner-party had been given by Gaston, over this morning’s breakfast-table, for her own and Geoffrey’s benefit. ‘The usual guest-night at mess. Curious how precisely alike all mess dinners are. The Engineer Colonel’s never finished commencement, “When we were in the lines before Sebastopol;” the Major’s tiger-slaying adventures in Bengal; the elderly Captain’s diatribes against Liberal Governments and enforced retirements, “A man in the very prime—no, sir, a man before he is in the prime of life put on the shelf.” And the Irishman’s story. And the subaltern’s witticisms.’ Gaston, I say, had enlivened the breakfast-table with his lively putting together of these oft-used materials. He had made no reference to the singing of French songs, or to Linda Thorne.
Then Lord Rex Basire’s memory must be at fault.
‘You cannot mean last night. You must be thinking of some former time. Mr. Arbuthnot dined with you at mess yesterday.’
‘Of course he did. After dinner we adjourned—we, the favoured few—as our manner is, to The Bungalow.’
‘Where Mrs. Thorne played accompaniments for Gaston.’
Dinah made the observation with mechanical self-control, hardly knowing what cold repetition of words this was that escaped her.
‘Yes; we had quite a chamber concert. A lot of rehearsing that accompanying business seems to want! Hardly ever drop in at The Bungalow of an afternoon without finding them at the piano.’
Dinah knew a moment’s cruel pain. There was a proud, hurt expression on her face. She stopped short, involuntarily. Then: ‘It would take much rehearsal,’ she said, ‘before I should play well enough to accompany Mr. Arbuthnot in public. But Mrs. Thorne seems clever nearly in everything. I wish I had her talents.’
And she resumed her walk, and began to speak—the village shyness thawing fast away—about the flowers, and the music, and the people.