‘A throat—an ankle—shoulders! Tell you what it is, sir,—she is the prettiest woman in the island—not one of our society beauties can hold a candle to her! And she’s not a woman one meets at any of the parties.—By and by, Arbuthnot, by and by.’ For Gaston with a presentiment of the truth, sat, restlessly, shuffling and re-shuffling the cards. ‘To view the Queen of Hearts in flesh and blood is better, surely, than handling her in pasteboard. Now where did one see that little divinity before? At Saturday’s rose-show, of course. Asked Linda Thorne about her. Mrs. Linda—true type of her sex—affected not to know her name. Luckily, such a paragon does not need a name. An Archdeaconess, if I mistake not, threw her little pebble. “The young person with the yellow hair was—nobody one knew.”’
Every man in the room, with the exception of Arbuthnot, had by this time crowded to the window. One of the youngsters hazarded a bold whisper in the host’s ear. It was old de Gourmet’s deafer ear. He caught the note of warning imperfectly. He resumed his parable with warmth:
‘French woman, do you say? Cannot believe it, sir. No French woman had ever such a complexion, such hair. But the dress, with its complex simplicity, comes from Paris, doubtless. Dove coloured mousseline de laine.’ The Colonel made these things as much a study as his Brillat Savarin. ‘A tippet, designedly plain, such as Perfection, only, dare put on. A little black velvet knot beneath the dainty chin.... (Directly, Arbuthnot, directly—calm your impatience.) And look at her teeth, now she smiles, and her dimples! The young fellow with her seems disposed to make the best of his opportunities—small blame to him!’
Throughout the listeners there ran a flash of hideous silence. At last some one passed a slip of paper, on which a name had been hastily scribbled, into Colonel de Gourmet’s gouty fingers, and then arose general conversation, mainly as to the weather prospects. After this fog that had been hanging about the Channel for days, and with the glass running down fast, what were the chances we should not have a thunderstorm in the course of the next twenty-four hours?
Gaston Arbuthnot arranged the cards in two neat packs on the table and waited silently for his host. He felt morally certain that the little divinity was his wife, also that Lord Rex Basire was her companion. And a wholesomely bitter contrition filled his soul, a feeling widely differing from the vague disrelish with which he had watched her teaching Basire cross-stitch five days before. Probably he never knew how dear Dinah’s white name was to him, never realised how culpably he had left her in the shade, until this moment’s humiliation.
And still Gaston’s countenance betrayed him not. An instant later, he was rallying the Colonel on his boyish enthusiasm, confessing that, for his own part, he was too staid a Benedict to exert himself, at the present state of the thermometer, merely because a nice-looking woman happened to pass along the street.
‘And what are our stakes—the usual fiver?’ asked de Gourmet, looking immensely tickled as he hobbled across the room to the card-table. ‘I am afraid of you though, Arbuthnot! You are just the man to be in luck.’
‘I don’t believe in luck. Conduct is fate.’ Gaston lifted his handsome face. He fixed his clear steely glance on the somewhat Silenus features over against him. ‘Champagne?—I thank you, Colonel. No brain-enemy, just at present. Don’t you know that we Yankees keep our heads cool——’
‘On purpose to rook the Britishers,’ interrupted de Gourmet, still with a suppressed chuckle in his voice.
‘On purpose to rook the Britishers. Now, let us attend to business, sir,’ said Gaston cheerfully. ‘The best of three games for a five-pound note—good!’