‘I have no plans, now. The summer has gone out of my year! Maybe I shall follow in the footsteps of Gaston and his wife. Dinah, I know, would not be sorry to leave this place.’
He spoke without premeditation. It had, perhaps, not occurred to Geff Arbuthnot’s coarser masculine perception that his meagre outline of the past had revealed a secret of which Dinah was, herself, ignorant. To Marjorie, in her despair, the mention of Dinah’s name was a last blow: the heavier, perhaps, in that Geoffrey gave it with such calmness, was prepared, as a matter of course, to seek refuge in the friendship of the fair and gentle woman to whom, although she had never loved him, he ‘owed everything.’
‘Or I may cross at once to England. That is likeliest. In England one can always fall back on work. I have had enough of idleness. A boat calls here on Sunday morning that will suit me well enough.’
‘On Saturday, then, grandpapa and I will look for your visit. Could you not,’ suggested Marjorie, with magnanimity, ‘ask Mr. and Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot to come with you to Tintajeux?’
Geoffrey had a moment’s hesitation. There was a note in her fresh and youthful voice which he had never before distinguished, and which, I think, wrung his heart. But he would not allow himself to soften. He would not forgive her until she repented her of the thing which she had uttered.
‘Gaston has not returned, Miss Bartrand. There are heavy fog-banks still at sea. The Cherbourg boat was not signalled when I left town, and Dinah—well, Dinah, of course, will be miserable until she sees her husband’s face.’
Geff took up his hat in readiness for departure, and Marjorie rose from her chair.
‘The Cherbourg boat will be back before Saturday, but, in any case, grandpapa and I will count upon seeing you. Good-night, Mr. Arbuthnot. This is not your last visit to Tintajeux. I do not acknowledge that we are saying good-bye for ever.’
She kept herself under singular control. For a second or two she yielded her cold hand, bravely, into Geff’s keeping. As he left the drawing-room she accorded him a lofty minuet de la cour curtsey, learnt, in her babyhood, from her first French governess. Then, when he was gone, when the figure she had watched so often had rounded the last turning in the Tintajeux avenue, the poor child, with leaden steps, made her way to the schoolroom. Sinking in her place beside the ink-stained table, Marjorie Bartrand rested her face upon a heap of books, then burst into a very thunder-shower of tears.