Gaston Arbuthnot believed it to be the fourteenth day of June, in the year of grace 188—.
‘Well, then’—Mrs. Thorne’s voice sank so as to be only half a tone higher than a whisper—‘will you dine with us this evening, at half-past seven? I believe,’ added Linda vaguely, ‘that one or two of the artillery officers may be coming to us. We do not entertain. I make a point of telling everybody that. Doctor Thorne and I do not entertain. But if our friends care to drop in unexpectedly, to eat our roast mutton with us, and smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards, there we are.’
It was to be a bachelor party, then. Dinah might possibly have been invited to eat roast mutton at Mrs. Thorne’s table. She could, under no circumstances, be asked to smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards. But Gaston accepted with frank cordiality. During the years of his married life it had so grown to be a matter of course that Dinah, dear good girl! should never go into the world, that even the form of hesitation at leaving her had been dropped on the part of Dinah’s husband.
‘No dress coat, no white tie, please. In these long June evenings one likes to stroll away as far from bricks and mortar as possible. There will not be a moon to-night. Still, even in the darkness, it will be enjoyable to breathe pure air and watch the light upon the Caskets from the jetty yonder.’
‘And what do you think of my old friend?’ Gaston Arbuthnot asked his wife when the Thornes had departed on their different roads—the Doctor to visit a patient in Miller’s Hotel; Linda, her dress, a caviller might say, scarce fitted to the work, to her poor dear brothers and sisters in the alleys. ‘I have listened to Linda Thorne’s verdict on you. Now for the reverse of the medal. What do you think of Linda Thorne?’
‘I think her vulgar.’
It was the first time Gaston had heard judgment so harsh from Dinah’s lips. Hers was the least condemnatory of human souls. She shrank with a rare modesty from giving opinions on the people with whom Gaston associated, was openly unashamed always of her own lowly origin, and of her inability to discern the finer shades of a society to which she was not born.
A slight tinge of red kindled on Arbuthnot’s cheek. ‘Vulgar is a strong word. Women are not always generous in their strictures upon each other. Yet it happened that Mrs. Thorne was singularly generous in her criticism of you. Linda thinks you beautiful, my dear. She said yours was the first face she has ever seen without a flaw.’
‘Standing close beside me as you did, Mrs. Thorne would have shown delicacy by not talking of me at all. Although I tried not to listen, I heard too well what she said. It was those flatteries of Mrs. Thorne’s, for of course I am no judge of manner, which made me think her vulgar. A lady at heart would have known how you must wince on hearing me so coarsely praised.’
For one moment Gaston Arbuthnot’s looks were threatening, then the cloud passed.