‘Just fancy! And Mr. Arbuthnot, I am convinced, spends his time—half his time—in designing quite lovely patterns for you?’
Dinah’s breast swelled as a vision of the Roscoff wild roses overcame her. She made no attempt at a parry.
‘If I had married an artist I would never have gone to the shops for patterns. Or rather, if I had married an artist I would never have embroidered at all. I should have thrown myself into his ambitions, his work—have spent my life so utterly at his side.’
Dinah stooped to pick up a little pink shell from the strand, by this action freeing herself from Linda Thorne. She put the shell inside her glove, thinking she would keep it as a memento of Langrune and of this summer day that had passed so nearly without a cloud. So nearly—but the summer day was not over yet!
‘All this time I am not accounting to you for your husband’s disappearance, am I? My dear creature, it was really the drollest thing! Robbie had not as yet floated up with the tide, and Mrs. Verschoyle and I, your husband with us, had made our slippery way across the rocks to mainland. Well, just as Gast ... I mean, as Mr. Arbuthnot was putting a last touch to his sketch, up ran a little Frenchman, full dress, a rose-and-white daughter in each hand, and an enormously stout wife, with a bouquet, following. He threw his arms round your husband’s neck, and but for Mr. Arbuthnot’s presence of mind would certainly have kissed him.’
‘Kissed!’
‘Of course. Have you never lived among French people? It was some old artist companion of Gast ... of your husband’s bachelor life. You can imagine the recollections of former joyous days spent in Paris as students together, the inquiries for mutual friends, now dead or married, the history each had to give of his marriage and present happiness!’
‘I cannot. I am not imaginative.’
It must be confessed that a tinge of displeasure was audible in Dinah’s voice. Every syllable of Mrs. Thorne’s unpremeditated chatter had wounded her like a stiletto prick.
‘Ah—and I am imaginative to my finger tips. We seem the very antithesis of each other, in character, as we are in looks.’ Linda had really a very graceful way of admitting her own plainness, when occasion offered. ‘I can assure you I filled up a dozen little blanks in our Benedicts’ exchange of confidences. I traced out a full and rounded whole most satisfactorily. People may slur over half a dozen years in as many words. If nature has endowed you with imagination, you read between the lines. The barest outline suggests the finished picture.’