She rose up hurriedly at the sound of her husband’s entrance. She brushed away some tell-tale tears, not, however, before Gaston’s quick glance had had opportunity to detect them.
All men dislike the sight of a wife in tears. A small minority may dislike the sight of a wife on her knees. Gaston Arbuthnot shared both prejudices. He concealed his irritation under a kiss—cold, mechanical, the recipient felt those kisses to be—bestowed on each of Dinah’s flushing cheeks.
‘I beg a thousand pardons for disturbing you at your prayers, my dear, but——’
‘I was not praying. I wish I had been,’ interrupted Dinah promptly. ‘To pray, one’s heart must be at rest.’
Now Gaston Arbuthnot looked upon all strong and unpleasant emotion with a feeling bordering on actual repugnance. And Dinah’s voice had that in it which threatened storm. His irritation grew.
‘I beg your pardon for interrupting a mood not calm enough for prayer (although it required a prayerful attitude), yet sad enough for tears. That terrible habit of weeping will wear away even your good looks in time, Dinah.’
A time far distant, surely! Never had she been fairer in Gaston’s sight than at this moment, in her fresh cambric dinner dress, with her hair like a nimbus of gold around her forehead, with a colour vermeil as any Italian dawn on the cheeks his lips had newly touched.
‘I should like to keep my good looks till I am fifty years old, if good looks were only faithful servants, if they brought one only a taste of real happiness. As it is——’
‘My dear girl, although you chance to be a little out of temper with life, don’t forget you have a husband. I am a vain man—so you and Geff tell me—and the chief of all my vanities is, that I am blest with a handsome wife.’
‘Out of temper with life? I think not, Gaston. Life has been sent me, the rugged with the smooth, and I must learn to fit myself to both. If I had been clever I should have learnt my lesson long ago. I must shape myself to things as they are, not want to shape them according to my poor village notions. I was trying to reason about it all just now.’