Mrs. Thorne’s manner was confident to-day, as of one with whom the world goes well. She ran skittishly down the steps leading from the hotel garden. She paused, tapping a high-heeled shoe in pretty impatience on the gravel. She looked this way and that, expectantly; at length, it would seem, decided, with a little merry shake of the head, for the chances of town over country. Then, with such ease of tread as high-heeled shoes are apt to confer on ladies whose summers are increasing, she commenced the steep descent of the hill.
‘I hope Mrs. Thorne has not been calling on me. I hope, if we stop, she will make me no pretty speeches,’ said Dinah under her breath. ‘I could not bear them just now. If Mrs. Thorne makes pretty speeches, I shall say something true to her.’
Geoffrey, man-like, showed signs of instant flight on hearing the ultimatum. He was in no vein, he said, for Linda Thorne’s fine spirits (was in no vein, I fear, for the better sex at all, in its liveliness or its asperity); he had an appointment to keep, a case of life and death, at the bedside of one of the quarry workers—would not be back till late—it was time for him to be on his road and——
‘In short,’ interrupted Dinah, ‘you have not courage to meet Mrs. Thorne!’
‘If you like to say so—yes,’ was Geff’s answer. ‘But don’t tell Mrs. Thorne the truth.’ He whispered this to Dinah at parting. ‘Or tell her such truth only as affects herself, not you.’
Dinah, however, was not in a temper for advice, even Geoffrey’s. Erect of carriage, with a flush of the cheeks, a sparkle in the eyes, Dinah walked grandly up the hill, determined, at every cost, that final truth should be spoken between her and Mrs. Thorne, did opportunity offer.
‘So our philosopher shows valour’s better part,’ thought Linda, as Geff vanished down a turning to the right. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot positively declines to face me! We have never been rapturously fond of each other. Now it is to be war to the knife. Excellent, detestable young man! I accept the challenge.’
And Mrs. Thorne mentally kissed her pale buff finger tips in the direction taken by Geoffrey.
Dinah, meanwhile, had breasted the hill. Her head was held aloft, her fine arms were folded in one of those attitudes of natural repose that had always been the despair of Gaston’s pencil. To the artist who has no ‘wood notes wild,’ the virtuoso with whom craft, workmanship, style, are all in all, is not perfect naturalness the most difficult to woo among the graces!