‘Your packing done?’ he asked her. ‘And have you moved these heavy boxes by yourself?’
‘The Frenchwoman helped me. I had no need of her—my arms are strong—but when she insisted, I thought it would look strange to refuse longer. I tried to speak to her lightly—just saying that I had to go away, of a sudden, to stay with friends in England.’
‘That was wise. It were a pity that idle tongues should begin to talk of us already.’
No answer came to this. Gaston saw that her hands trembled as they lay tightly clasped together on her knee.
‘And about money, Dinah?’
Crossing the room, Mr. Arbuthnot shut down the window, then placed himself at the distance of two or three feet from his wife. He looked at her long and tenderly, looked as though on that white, strained face he saw some beauty which the dulness of his senses, the selfishness of his heart, had never during the past four years let him discover.
‘Geoffrey and I have just had a long talk. I believe, as far as Southampton, you had better let Geff be purse-holder. Then we must think of the future. We must plan as to a permanent settlement. I am a poor man, you know, Dinah, or rich only by fits and starts. If I can secure to you two hundred pounds a year, could you make it enough?’
Dinah raised her clasped hands deprecatingly. Her speech failed her. Now, in the moment when she needed strength, self-control most, they proved traitors. She could only sit, faint, cold, sick, only hear the details of her own passionate wish put into calm, reasonable—ay, and generous detail by Gaston.
‘For the first year,’ he repeated, ‘until I become a steadier worker, could you make an allowance of two hundred pounds suffice?’
‘I want nothing but a few pounds at first,’ said Dinah, with a desperate effort. ‘After that I will work—plain sewing, out-door work, anything they can find for me to do.’