‘For me, Marjorie Bartrand, living on rose leaves in Tintajeux Manoir—oh! I should be equally charming with brains or without them, should not I? Thank you immensely for the compliment, sir. If I could change places I would rather be the village schoolmistress, plainly doing her day’s work for her day’s wages, than live idly on all the rose leaves, all the flatteries, the world could heap together.’ Then lifting her eyes, a look in them to pierce a guilty man’s soul, ‘At what time should I be likely to find Mrs. Arbuthnot at home?’ she asked him with cold directness. ‘I shall drive in to Miller’s Hotel. I shall call on Mrs. Arbuthnot this afternoon.’
A flush of undisguised pleasure went over Geoffrey’s face. All these days he had hoped that some offer of the kind would come from Marjorie, not doubting that in this small island rumours of Dinah’s beauty, perhaps of Dinah’s troubles, must have reached as far as Tintajeux.
‘I am afraid Mrs. Arbuthnot is to be found at home at most hours.’
‘So I am told.’
‘Dinah goes out too little in this fine June weather.’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot must amend her ways. To-day is our Guernsey rose show. There will be military bands playing, dandies promenading,’ said Miss Bartrand witheringly, as she glanced at Geff’s undandified figure, ‘fine ladies thinking and talking of everything under God’s sun save the roses. Some of Mrs. Arbuthnot’s friends will surely tempt her to join the gay crowd in the Arsenal?’
‘Dinah has no friends. I mean, we have been too short a time in Guernsey to look for many callers. In the matter of visiting-cards, ladies, I am told, are prone to be sequacious.’
So did Geff, with single-minded good-will, seek to round off the edges of Dinah Arbuthnot’s isolation, of Gaston’s neglect.
‘And yet they say,’ cried Marjorie, her heart palpitating well-nigh to pain, ‘that Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband has acquaintance without stint.’