And ’tis all an old story, and my despair
Fit subject for some new song.’
And when she had got thus far, the clouds of her ignorance lightened. She began to understand.
Shortly before ten o’clock, entered Geoffrey. The parlour lamps were not lit. Dinah’s figure was in dense shadow as she leaned, absorbed in her own thoughts, beside the open window. Geoffrey, believing the room empty, sang under his breath, as he groped his way across to the mantelshelf; no very distinguishable tune—an ear for music was not among Geff’s gifts—but with sufficient of a quick, triplet measure in it to recall a Spanish Barcadero that Marjorie Bartrand was fond of singing to herself.
To Dinah’s sick heart the song was consciously wounding.
She had been so long used to Geff’s undivided homage, that sense of power had, little by little, grown into tyranny, gentle rose-leaf tyranny, whose weight Geoffrey’s broad shoulders bore without effort, and yet having in its nature one of tyranny’s inalienable qualities, lack of justice.
‘Always in spirits, Geoffrey!’ The reproach came to him through the gloom. ‘It is good to think, whether the day is dark or shining, our cousin Geoffrey can always sing.’
Geoffrey was at her side in a moment.
‘It is cruel to speak of my horrible groanings as singing, Mrs. Arbuthnot; crueller still to hint of them as betokening good spirits. Where is Gaston? You are back earlier than I expected from your walk to Roscoff.’
‘The walk fell through. I shall have to border my work with a rose pattern bought in the shops. Gaston was obliged to dine at Dr. Thorne’s. He made the engagement, of course, without thinking of our walk. I ought never to have counted on those Roscoff wild roses. I——’