Dinah’s voice lapsed, brokenly, into silence.
‘If you would like the roses, you can have them by breakfast to-morrow,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Few things I should enjoy better than a six-mile trudge in the early morning.’
‘No, Geoffrey, no. Gaston always tells me that my bought patterns are atrocious, and the walk was planned by him, and he was to have sketched from the fresh briars by lamplight. My heart in it all is over. The Roscoff roses may go!’
As so much of weightier delight had been allowed to go, negligently, irrevocably, out of Dinah Arbuthnot’s life. Dinah herself might not suggest the thought, but to Geoffrey’s mind it was a vivid, a pathetic one.
‘And why should you not take my escort? You know I am never burthened with engagements. Let us go to Roscoff to-morrow. You owe Miss Bartrand a visit. Well, we will take Tintajeux on our road, and make Marjorie show us the way to Roscoff Common.’
‘Miss Bartrand will not expect me to return her visit. She came here because—because you, dear Geff, with or without words, bade her come! I should never have courage to face the grandfather. Gaston would be the right person to call on the Seigneur of Tintajeux.’
‘The Seigneur of Tintajeux might think otherwise,’ Geoffrey laughed. ‘Old Andros Bartrand made minute inquiries about Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot the last time I saw him.’
‘About me—always the same story!’ cried Dinah, uneasily. ‘Why should people talk of us? What is there in my life, or in Gaston’s, that need arouse so much curiosity?’
‘Shall I answer as your friend, Lord Rex, would do?’