‘We may count upon you, may we not? Arbuthnot has accepted for himself. Now we want your promise. If the weather continues like this we may rely upon seeing you on board the Princess next Wednesday?’
‘You have not explained what seeing me on board the Princess means.’ Dinah’s tone was evasive. Probably, thought Lord Rex, the puritanical conscience required time to collect itself! ‘I don’t know, at my staid age,’ she added, ‘that I should countenance you. What did you say about carrying all the nice-looking people in Guernsey out to sea?’
Upon this slight whisper of encouragement Rex Basire entered voluminously into details. The proprieties—to begin, he declared, solemn of face, with the facts of greatest significance—the proprieties were set at rest. An undeniable Archdeaconess, a Cassandra Tighe (minus nothing but her harp), were secured. The de Carteret girls, and Rosie Verschoyle, four of the Guernsey beauties regnant, had accepted. It would be a high spring tide on Wednesday, and the Princess must start early to reach the Race of Alderney before the ebb. Afternoon would find them anchored off Langrune, in Normandy. ‘Where we shall land, observe the manners and customs of the natives, eat a French dinner, take our little whirl, perhaps, in the casino ball-room,’ said Lord Rex, ‘and so back, à la Pepys, to our virtuous homes.’
‘The scheme is too gay for me,’ cried Dinah, with an uneasy dread of Gaston’s disapproval. ‘I never danced in my life. I hope—no, I am sure, my lord, that I shall never set foot inside the walls of a casino.’
‘Not of a French casino, Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ Lord Rex argued warily, still mindful of the puritanical note.
‘Certainly not. A French casino! Why, that only makes it worse.’
‘A French casino is an innocent kind of sea-side dancing school. Papas and mammas of families sit around. Small boys and girls exhibit their steps. Papa drinks his little glass of absinthe, mamma her tumbler of sugar-water. We go back to our hotel, hand-in-hand with the babies, at ten o’clock. Except the Zoological Gardens on week days, I know no human form of dissipation so mild as a French casino.’
‘I should have to meet too many strangers on board. I should be alone among them all. The only lady in Guernsey who has called on me is Geff’s pupil, Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux.’
‘Who will be invited to come, under your charge.’ Lord Rex adroitly left more delicate social questions untouched. ‘Marjorie Bartrand would be rough on a chaperon, I should think. Difficult to say whom the Girtonian of the future would not be rough on! But you, Mrs. Arbuthnot, seem to have stepped into her favour.’