‘When my lecture, as you please to call it, was given I did not know that you existed, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’
‘Miss Bartrand!’
‘The lecture was meant, in good faith, for another person. If an apology is needed, there you have it! I—I had listened to idle gossip,’ said Marjorie, taking desperate courage at the sound of her own voice, ‘and so—I must say it out, little though I like such subjects—I thought you were a married man, sir. I thought so from the first evening you came here. I thought so until the hour when I saw Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot at the rose-show.’
‘And your motives—when you called on Dinah?’ exclaimed Geoffrey, thrown off his guard.
‘When I called on Mrs. Arbuthnot I believed her to be my tutor’s wife. I had heard a great deal about her goodness and her beauty. And I had almost grown to hate you,’ added Marjorie, with one of her terrible bursts of outspokenness, ‘for leaving such a woman as Dinah at home, neglected, while you amused yourself.’
Then she lifted her eyes. She was startled to see how Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s face had paled; paled under the incivility, so Marjorie supposed, of her speech.
‘As a fact, of course, I never hated you at all.’ Her voice shook a little. ‘That gentle, beautiful Mrs. Arbuthnot is not your wife.’
‘Not my wife,’ echoed poor Geoffrey absently.
His tone was chill. Dipping a pen in the ink, he began to trace meaningless curves and lines on the cover of the exercise-book nearest his hand. During a few seconds he was obviously unmindful of his pupil’s presence.
‘Her lips, with their sad expression, haunt me,’ remarked Marjorie presently. ‘Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, I should think, must be the most beautiful woman in the world.’