But Dinah had no worldly experience at all, neither had she the imaginativeness which renders some equally untaught people nimble at guessing. In her mind was one engrossing thought—Gaston. In her ears rang the text of Mrs. Thorne’s message. ‘I deposited the stakes on a corner of your mantleshelf. Tell your husband from me that he has won, that I am bankrupt.’
There was no room, in her tempest of heart and brain, for doubts that could have been favourable to her own peace.
‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s Hotel.’ She took the letter—at first with unwillingness—in her hands. She turned it over and over. The envelope was too small for all that the sender had forced it to contain; it adhered on one side, only. A touch, Dinah thought, shrinking from her thought, and the edges must come asunder. Her hands trembled so violently that she let the letter fall, with some force, on the ground. As she picked it up she saw that the narrow edge of adhering envelope had become narrower. An instant more of dalliance—and the temptation, strong and imperious, to open it altogether, had taken hold of her.
‘Be true to yourself,’ whispered a still small voice, the voice of Dinah’s better nature, ‘loyal, upright, as you have striven to be from the day you married Gaston Arbuthnot. Go away from him to-night, to-morrow, if you have not wifely courage to live your life out at his side. But go, with head erect, looking neither to the right hand nor the left, till the last.’
Then rose another voice, bolder of tone, of strain less heroic.
‘Poor, foolish, hot-hearted woman! Is it not possible that you are brewing a thunderstorm in a tea-cup? Why these turns and twistings of conscience? Linda Thorne, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, thinking no evil, make one of the silly wagers common among idle people who inhabit an idle world. The lady is the loser, calls at her friend’s hotel to discharge her debt, and meeting the friend’s wife, confesses, playfully, that she is bankrupt! Open that quarter-inch of yawning envelope, as Linda Thorne, no doubt, intended you to do. In Gaston’s absence, you have often opened letters addressed to him, by his own desire. Where is the fancied line between former right and present wrong. How could it matter to Gaston if you did see the contents of a packet in which there is probably not a syllable of writing?’
And Dinah’s heart was vanquished by the meanness of opportunity. She opened it.
A length of folded ribbon met her sight; a tiny bouquet, odorous still with yesterday’s sweetness, of briar and of heliotrope; a sheet of notepaper upon which one word was written. Bare hints—outlines of some unknown story, which jealous passion might easily colour, fill up with vivid detail, endow with pulsating life! After the first moment’s shock, Dinah stood like a woman petrified. Her eyes were fixed on the one word—never meant for their perusal! Her face was bloodless. She felt cold, stupefied with anger. It seemed to her that she could not drag herself from the spot where this hateful, sure light had dispelled her darkness for ever. She waited—as though waiting could avail her! At last the striking of a clock caused her to start. She had got to dress, she remembered, to face men and women, to dine—for Gaston’s sake. With an effort that almost cost her bodily pain, Dinah made her way into her bedroom. She locked, double locked the door. Then holding the envelope and its contents between her shivering hands, she tried to force herself into calmness, to resolve on conduct, if that were possible, which should be just to herself and to her husband.
He was guilty of no actual wrong-doing. This thought presented itself, in clear pure light, amidst all the dusky half-shades of her mind. Gaston was fickle, neglectful of herself, too easily led captive along the road of pleasure. Worse things than these she could never think of him. To the moment of her death he must remain her best beloved and her lord; the one man, could the hour of choosing come again, whom she would choose out of ten thousand. She did not accuse Gaston of wrong. She sought not to blacken Linda. For aught she knew, these delicately sentimental friendships, these intimacies which permitted tender expression—the yielding of a ribbon or a flower!—might, in the world above her head, be held innocent.
What she did know was that she, Dinah, belonged not to that world, desired no further education in its usages. A comedy ... an amusing drawing-room charade, perhaps ... was in course of rehearsal between a tired Indian lady, needing sensation, and her husband. She would not passively, ignobly stand by, a spectator. She would drag out her life of paltry distrust no longer. Gaston’s formal leave must be asked for, before she started; money also—enough to take her from Guernsey to the Devonshire moors. This would be all. Briefly, if Heaven would help her, honestly, she would tell Gaston what wish lay next her heart. And Gaston was not likely to thwart her! By Monday—oh, that it could be earlier—she would go back to her own people, to a life shone on by no sun, watered by no shower, a life shut out from keen pleasure as from keen humiliation for evermore.