‘Half! What do you say to a quarter, a fraction?’ exclaimed Marjorie, hotly. ‘What do you say to a creature stuffed as the dolls are, with sawdust, in lieu of a human heart at all? A creature well set up as regards shoulders, six feet in measurement, with fine white teeth, blue eyes, yellow moustache, a swagger and a sword? His would scarcely be the larger soul, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the stronger will which it should be a woman’s crown of honour to obey!’
Down went another head of clustering camomile, felled by a well-aimed stroke from Marjorie’s hand. Her eyes flashed fire.
‘And yet a wayward girl, scarcely past sixteen, and with no mother to give her counsel, might for two or three weeks, you know, be hurried into thinking such a man a hero. I was that girl, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Vanity blinded me, or the love of power, or something stronger than either. At all events, when Major Tredennis asked me, one fine morning, to be engaged to him, I said “Yes.”’
‘And the Seigneur of Tintajeux?’ asked Dinah, looking round at the dimpled, indignant face of seventeen.
‘“Major Tredennis comes of a race of gentlemen,” said grandpapa. “If Major Tredennis can make adequate settlements, and my granddaughter elects to spend her life with a popinjay, she may do so.”’
‘And, with no better advice than that, you were engaged?’
‘I was engaged. Major Tredennis used to write me foolish notes. He gave me a ring I never wore. He gave me chocolate creams, and a setter puppy. He sang French songs to me in an English accent. Looking back at it all now, I think the chocolate creams were the best part of that bad time, except, of course, the setter, whom I loved. When it was all broken off—for the owner of the white teeth and the sword was a right wicked craven, and should have married a girl in England who cared for him, without once looking at me;—when it was all broken off, and I had to send Jock back, I did weep, scalding tears, at parting from him. The only tears I have ever shed, or shall shed, in connection with love-matters.’
‘Wait!’ was Dinah Arbuthnot’s answer. ‘If I see you, as I hope to do, two or three years hence, it may be you will tell a different story.’
Marjorie glanced at the yachting party, sauntering contentedly, a hundred yards or so in front, among the lights and shadows of the orchard-bordered road. There was Lord Rex, outrageously devoted in manner to Rosie Verschoyle, with whom he loitered apart. And there, a little divided also from the rest, was Geff Arbuthnot, well entertained, one must surmise, by the shallow talk, fascinated by the pink-and-white charms of Ada, the most soulless and the prettiest of the de Carteret family.
‘If such a revolution takes place, a dozen years hence, that I marry,’ she observed, after consideration, ‘the husband I choose shall be a head-and-shoulders taller than myself, morally. No singer of ballad sentiment, no popinjay, with yellow moustache, and a sword, and uniform, next time. If I take to myself a master, he shall be a man—with a temper, a will, a purpose in life, all nobler than my own.’