‘And is Geoffrey to be asked?’
‘Geoffrey? Ah, to be sure—your cousin. Senior wrangler, was he not?’
‘Geoffrey took his honours in classics.’
‘Frightfully “boss” man, any way. Does not look as if he cared about frivolous amusements in general, still——’
Lord Rex hesitated. Some finer prophetic sense informed him that Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s might be a name as well omitted from the programme of pleasure he was chalking out with such zealous trouble for next Wednesday.
‘But is the party to be frivolous? I hardly understood that. No one loves the sea better than Geff. He will go, I’m sure, if I go.’
This was said by Dinah with conviction. Through long habit she had come to regard Geoffrey’s obedience to her smallest wish as an accomplished fact.
‘Notes shall be despatched to Miss Bartrand and to your cousin without an hour’s delay. I am awfully indebted to you, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You can’t think what a load of moral obligation you have taken off my mind by saying “Yes.”’
And when Lord Rex left Miller’s Hotel he was radiant; a possibility of Geoffrey Arbuthnot saying ‘Yes’ also, the one little shadow of a cloud that obscured next Wednesday’s horizon.
On his return to Fort-William, later on in the day, his road took him past the garden gate of Doctor Thorne’s Bungalow. The gate stood open, and Lord Rex sauntered in, as it was the habit of unoccupied insular youth to do, during the afternoon hours of tea and gossip.