‘Easily. You have only to give up your own room and sleep in the conservatory. When Rahnee is married and offers to come home, with four babies and a native nurse, sleeping in the conservatory,’ observed Linda, ‘is just the kind of sacrifice I shall be prepared to make.’
‘You would have the old jungle ague back upon you in twenty-four hours if you did. Neither you nor Doctor Thorne are people who should take liberties with yourselves. Indeed, I think you have both been looking sadly this spring. Rosie, my dear, come here.’ For the waltz had ended. Gaston Arbuthnot was walking past, English fashion, his partner on his arm. ‘Come and sit down by me out of the draught. I do hope this is the last dance we shall stay for, Mr. Arbuthnot?’
‘No, indeed, mamma. We are to stay for the next. It is another waltz, and I am engaged for it to Lord Rex;’ Rosie glanced, a little ruefully, towards the door where Dinah and Lord Rex still stood. ‘Thank you so much, Mr. Arbuthnot, for our beautiful waltz. I hope,’ said Rosie Verschoyle, ‘all my partners, as long as I live, will have taken dancing lessons in the reign of Louis Philippe.’
When the opening bars of the waltz sounded, Lord Rex, with no very great alacrity, came across the room to claim Rosie’s hand. Gaston Arbuthnot bent over Linda.
‘“For auld lang syne.” Is this to be our dance, Mrs. Thorne?’
Linda Thorne was not a pretty, not by natural gift a graceful, woman. She was a perfect dancer. Poor Dinah, from her hiding-place, had found a genuine pleasure in watching Gaston waltz with dimpled, smiling Rosie Verschoyle. For Dinah, like all wholesome-minded mortals, had unmixed sympathy with the spirits and enjoyment of light-hearted girlhood. She looked with very different perceptions at Linda Thorne, looked at her with something of the feeling a true but unpopular artist might know on watching the facile successes of meretricious talent. This tinselled, pleasure-loving Linda, with her clinging draperies, her Indian perfumes—this wife whose heart was not with her husband, this mother who contentedly could leave her child to servants—was so far below the ideal towards which, since her marriage, Dinah Arbuthnot had faithfully striven.
Below an ideal standard. And yet, in such vital points as talking amusing talk, in dancing, dressing, dinner-giving, in the all-important matter of pleasing men difficult to please like Gaston Arbuthnot, how immeasurably was Linda her superior! Dinah’s heart contracted. She was just going to shift away into deeper shadow, when a hand touched her arm with friendly purpose. Turning, she saw Marjorie Bartrand—Cassandra Tighe, laden with nets and specimen boxes, in the rear.
Marjorie’s face glowed damask. ‘A pity you were not with us, Mrs. Arbuthnot. We have been having a glorious time, moth-hunting in the Luc lanes, Miss Tighe and I, and—and—every now and then Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot condescended to join when the chase got warm. What are you all about here?’ Marjorie ascended a step; she took a smiting glance round the ball-room. ‘Well, this is as good as a sermon. Miss Tighe, come and be edified. Is it not fine to see middle-aged couples waltzing for the public good?’
With a little scornful gesture of the head Marjorie indicated Gaston and-his partner.
‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot may be doing his steps from personal motives, perhaps because he has the “artistic temperament,” whatever,’ said Marjorie, ‘that elastic term may mean. Nothing but severe principles, the determination to point a moral, could make Linda Thorne go through violent exercise on a night like this.’