Despite the neat turning of this speech, away Mr. Arbuthnot and the Thornes went,—Linda, with her cachemires, her bouquets of wild flowers, her fears for Robbie, her wafted kisses to her friends, creating little theatrical sensations to the last. The boat was visible for a few seconds only, so swiftly did the Princess again get under way. There was a profuse waving of handkerchiefs. ‘Good-night, every one!’ rang cheerily across the water in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. And then Dinah awakened to the knowledge that she was forsaken, this time by no accident, but of cold-blooded, determined forethought—forsaken, with all the world to see, with Lord Rex Basire persistently talking, as though nothing of moment had happened, at her elbow.
CHAPTER XXXII ROSE-WATER SOCIALISM
Dinah did not turn from him. Nay, although her brain was in a whirl, although her voice was not under command, although her heart was bursting, Dinah’s lips smiled. She was monosyllabic, Lord Rex felt, but monosyllabic with a difference. And eager to improve the scantiest, most meagre encouragement, he began instantly to ransack such memory and imagination as were his for pertinent subject-matter.
Frothy small-talk, personal compliments, local gossip, were little relished, as he had proved, by Dinah Arbuthnot. She did not read newspaper trials, had never opened a society journal, knew nothing about actors or actresses, or novels, or prime ministers, or popular divines. You could not get her even to talk about herself. But then, that face of hers! If one might, quietly, stand gazing at her surpassing fairness as one does at a canvas or a marble, Lord Rex Basire, on this summer night, would have asked nothing more. His duties as a host, however, the sense that others might construe his silence into deficiency of wit, forced upon him articulate speech.
‘Awful hole, Alderney, for an idle man! Now I was stationed there for three months and got through an awful lot of work. No good letting circumstances beat you. I coloured a meerschaum first rate—worked at it, morning, noon, and night. I taught two of my terriers to march on hind legs, while I whistled the “Marseillaise.” Favourite tune of mine, the “Marseillaise.”’
‘So your lordship has told me.’
Dinah thought of their first conversation at the rose-show.
‘I loathe classic music—loathe everything, in art and literature, but what I can understand. Ever seen Maxwell Grimsby’s Alderney sketches, by the bye? Dab of greenish-gray for the sea. Dab of bluish-gray for the clouds—Storms, Sunsets, Whirlwinds, things you may as well frame upside down as straight, if you choose.’