Upon Dinah’s joyous lips Geoffrey, without an effort, became at once a familiar household word—dear good old Geff, through whom, obliquely, her introduction to the husband she passionately loved had come about!
But Geoffrey, after a few stammering, painful efforts, abandoned the calling of Dinah by her Christian name for ever.
He could and did call her so to Gaston only. He intended to stand by her heroically, absent, or in her presence; intended, God helping him, to be the good brotherly influence of her life and of her husband’s. Looking upon the eyes that met his with such cruel self-possession, upon the lips which he had once madly coveted to press, Geoffrey Arbuthnot realised that he could never feel towards Dinah as a brother feels. He resolved that his speech, knowingly, should not play traitor to his heart. Gaston’s wife must, for him, be coldly, stiffly, conventionally, ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ until his life’s end.
‘Yes, I am up still, Geff. There’s no chance of seeing Gaston till long past midnight. A lady like Mrs. Thorne, accustomed to India and Indian military society,’ said Dinah, ‘would be sure to keep late hours. So I thought I would shade my poppies straight through. I must wait for daylight to put in the pinks and scarlets.’
Crossing to the table where Dinah was laboriously stitching, Geoffrey seated himself at her side. He looked attentively down at her work with those acute, deep-browed gray eyes of his.
‘Your embroidery is very——’ he was about to say ‘beautiful,’ but checked himself. The star-strewn night, the hay-scents along the cliffs, the roses of Tintajeux were in his soul, lifting it above sympathy with poor Dinah’s wool-work. ‘Your embroidery is very delicate and smooth,’ he went on truthfully. ‘And how quick you are about it! You only began the top yellow rose when I stayed with you and Gaston, I recollect, last Easter.’
Dinah’s pieces of work were on a scale that carried one back to the female industry of the Middle Ages, yet was their ultimate use nebulous. Vast ottomans, vast cushions, yards of curtain border, imply a mansion. And the Arbuthnot’s mansion at present existed not. But on what else should a childless woman, cut off from household duties, not over fond of books, forlornly destitute of acquaintance, and with an ever-absent husband, employ herself?
Once, long ago, the poor girl made Gaston a set of shirts, as a birthday surprise. These shirts were lovingly, exquisitely stitched, as Dinah Thurston had been taught to stitch in her childhood. They were also a consummate failure. As a monument of patience, he observed, they were beyond praise. As a fit—‘Well,’ said Gaston, kissing her cheek in careless gratitude, ‘it is not a case of Eureka.’
He never wore them, never knew on what day, in what manner, his wife, fired by sharp disappointment, got them out of existence. Simply, the shirts did not adjust themselves well round his, Gaston Arbuthnot’s, shapely throat. It was not a case of Eureka. The subject interested him no farther.