‘In an attitude that I misunderstood,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot.
‘I go on my knees when I need to think, clearly and humbly. I would not dare to say at such times that I pray.’
Talk like this was beneath, or above, Gaston Arbuthnot’s level. He told her so plainly.
‘My afternoon has been passed in a thoroughly mundane and grovelling manner, Dinah. I left this house at about three, just when you were giving Lord Rex Basire a lesson in cross-stitch! Since then I have been spending my time, not in solemn thoughts that required genuflexion, but in listening to the last little version of the last little bit of island gossip. It seems you mean, after all, to go into the world where, as I have often told you, so many more sink than swim. You have accepted Rex Basire’s invitation for the picnic next Wednesday?’
The accusation, if it were one, came with a sharpness of ring foreign to Gaston Arbuthnot’s modulated voice. Dinah’s colour deepened.
‘I have accepted Lord Rex Basire’s invitation for Wednesday—yes.’
‘You cannot, I think, mean to go. The picnic will be a helter-skelter kind of affair. It was got up by these young men, in the first instance, more as a frolic than anything else, and——’
‘You are going yourself, are you not, Gaston?’
‘That is uncertain. I believe I did give a conditional consent over the dinner-table, before it was at all sure the thing would come off.’
‘And Mrs. Thorne is going?’