‘I am glad, in spite of all that has happened, to see you back.’
And Dinah, who had never uttered an airy nothing since she was born, looked hard at him. Traces, unmistakable, of tear-shedding gave an expression Gaston Arbuthnot liked not to her eyes.
‘Yet you did not show your gladness by meeting me on the pier—grim and dirty objects we must all have been after our twenty-four hours’ discomfort! Perhaps I deserved to be neglected,’ said Gaston, in a tone of resignation. ‘But remember, darling, I am not accustomed to miss your face when I have been away. The punishment, coming immediately after a course of Alderney and fog, struck me as rough.’
‘Don’t talk of punishment,’ Dinah answered, her voice betraying the strong effort by which she kept it controlled. ‘Your staying away has been hard to bear ... and now, now I wish to forget everything but that you are back safe.’
‘And what did you do with your time, yesterday? Of course you were not anxious. You knew that fog, and fog alone, was keeping me in Alderney.’
‘Yesterday was the blackest day I have ever lived through.’
And Dinah lifted her face, courting rather than turning from her husband’s scrutiny.
‘Blackest? Why, I thought you had had sunshine in Guernsey, that the fog concentrated itself with vile partiality upon our horrible rock yonder! And what did you do with your time, then,’ went on Gaston, with unabated cheerfulness. ‘Where was Geoffrey?’
‘I did not think of Geoffrey. I had heart for nothing but to stay in my own room.’
‘Substituting tea for dinner, close air for oxygen, as Woman loves to do when she is in trouble—or has manufactured trouble for herself. And had you no visitors at all to lighten your darkness?’