CHAPTER XLII EMANCIPATION
Dinah Arbuthnot’s face asked vividly for explanation.
‘Made sure Arbuthnot would be here—that is to say, our Arbuthnot’—Lord Rex stammered; he showed embarrassment that sat on him oddly, as he apologised for his uninvited presence. ‘The comings and goings of the Cambridge cousin are, naturally, beyond my powers of calculation.’
‘Naturally,’ echoed Dinah. She remembered, with a pang of self-reproach, what manner of errand kept Geoffrey absent.
‘Strolled round here early—by accident, you know—thought I’d ask myself to dinner with your husband. Clean forgot, till Miller or some one put it into my head, it was guest night. That was half an hour ago. Ought to have started off, instanter, to Fort-William.’
‘And why, pray, did you not do so?’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, can you ask me!’
Rex Basire’s tone adequately supplemented his words. And Dinah’s pulse quickened. She was on the threshold, she remembered, of a new, an emancipated life. A wife who lives apart from her husband must accept her position, grow used to many things, to every complexion of whisper among the rest. That is the world’s immutable sentence. Away from Gaston, divorced from the arm which, during four years, had cradled her in warm safety—she must learn, like other unloved women, to rely on her own strength—her strength and the chivalry of all such knights-errant, such Rex Basires, as should cross her path!
About the chivalry more might have to be learnt, hereafter. Dinah realised, before the first step of her downward journey was taken, that her strength was weakness. She felt as though all eyes around the table must watch her with suspicion, read her secret. Rex Basire’s tone of assured admiration brought the blood miserably, shamefully to her cheeks.