Marjorie Bartrand held herself as stiffly at bay from her partner as was possible.
‘Well, you’ll enjoy our dance, for instance, better than being shut up in a schoolroom over musty books and figures with Arbuthnot?’
‘I shall not enjoy it at all.’ Without a second’s hesitation came the answer. ‘Hostesses do not dance. See, there is Ada de Carteret standing out. Give me my freedom, pray, and ask her.’
‘Your freedom—to go indoors, to “work a last problem, write one Latin line,” with Arbuthnot? No, no, Miss Bartrand, you are the best dancer in Guernsey, and I don’t often get the chance of a waltz with you.’
For Oscar Jones, like bigger men, had his vanities. The thought of cutting out Geoffrey Arbuthnot was tasteful to him. It may be added that, although Marjorie’s tongue had not lost its sharpness, she was at this moment the sweetest-looking girl among the little crowd of dancers. The fire of strong emotion glittered in her large eyes. Her cheeks glowed damask. Her slim, white-clad figure showed up, in exceedingly agreeable relief, against the dense background of cedar-shaded lawn.
That there was a certain dramatic interest connected with Geoffrey’s going seemed divined by all. The divination rose to a whisper among the non-dancers, elderly men and women who, gathering on the drawing-room steps, enjoyed the pleasant sensations which bright sunshine, a garden of flowers, blue sky, and the sight of young people moving to dance-music, can scarce fail of producing.
‘The child has a hectic flush that I do not like,’ observed the plaintive voice of Mrs. Verschoyle. ‘I wish any one dared ask the Seigneur if the mother died of heart-complaint. All that class of disease is hereditary, and poor Marjorie is so little cared for! Not a creature to see whether she wears a thick sole or a thin one.’
The Archdeaconess was standing close at hand, looking on at the sunshine, the flowers, the lightly moving figures, through her accustomed smoke-coloured medium. Madame Corbie turned round with slow severity on Mrs. Verschoyle.
‘Marjorie Bartrand is not a girl to die of heart disease!’ The assertion was made with such suggestive profundity that mild little Mrs. Verschoyle recoiled a step. ‘Marjorie Bartrand wants the refined observance, the scrupulous exactness, the dignified correctness of manner which can only be obtained at school. None of your Girtons. None of your Newnhams. A strictly disciplined school, such as prevailed in my young days, for the formation of character and the affections. I do not consider,’ said Madame Corbie, ‘that Marjorie’s study of Greek and mathematics has been to her advantage.’