‘Do you hear, Mr. Arbuthnot—the dancers have changed their tune?’ She asked this as the children, eddying like spirit-figures in an opera scene round the fire, broke into a new measure, ‘Marie, soak thy bread in wine!’—universal refrain of all French children from the Pyrenees to the Channel. ‘“Marie, soak thy bread!” How that foolish rhyme brings back the Benjamins’ salon, and my place behind the piano, and you, Mr. Arbuthnot, handing round refreshments with the small slave-driver, Moïse! “Marie, soak thy bread”.... Alas!’—Mrs. Thorne’s utterances grew mystic—‘We women have to soak our bread in sour enough wine, have we not?’
‘The Benjamin refreshments—sugar-water, orgeat,’ mused Gaston Arbuthnot, keeping safely to the practical. ‘Yes, those were charming evenings, especially when Papa Moïse did not sing. I remember, as though ’twere yesterday, how my poor mother used to suspect Madame Benjamin of putting bad almonds in the orgeat.’
CHAPTER XXVIII FOR AULD LANG SYNE
Meantime, whilst this mature pair of sentimentalists recalled the past under the starlight, the younger people, sound of heart and limb, were making the most of the present inside the walls of Luc Casino. Fine weather for their voyage, an excellent French dinner, and now a ball, with distractingly pretty girls for partners, what further enjoyment could hearts as light as the hearts of the subaltern hosts desire?
Lord Rex, only, played spectator. While Rosie Verschoyle danced waltz, polka, American, to outward seeming in gayer spirits than her wont, Lord Rex remained fixed in his attendance on Mrs. Arbuthnot, beside one of the open ball-room doors. Dinah was curiously staunch of purpose, about trifles as about serious things. She clung to ‘first principles.’ It was a first principle with her never to enter a casino, English or French, and Rex Basire vainly expended his best special pleading in seeking to change her.
Mrs. Arbuthnot objected, perhaps, to waltz with a one-armed man? Would she give him a polka, then? Would she ‘rush’ an American quadrille? It made it ever so much more diverting if one did not know the figures of an American. Well, if she would not dance at all, would she take his arm and walk round the rooms? ‘Simply to put them in their place, Mrs. Arbuthnot. I have my British vanity. I want these bragging Frenchmen, accustomed to nothing handsomer than lay figures out of the pattern books, to see you.’
All in vain. Dinah wished neither to dance nor to dazzle. Only, if Lord Rex pleased—thus, after a space, she admonished him—it would be wise for his lordship to join the rest of his party. Miss Verschoyle was standing out; there could not be a likelier time than the present for him to secure Miss Verschoyle’s hand.
His lordship, however, did not please. And so, when Gaston and Linda Thorne returned, later on, from their walk, the first fact patent to both on entering the ball-room was Dinah’s absence. With a quick look around, Linda discerned Rosie Verschoyle standing at her mother’s side, partnerless.