‘A pleasure, and an immense surprise to meet like this!’ Mrs. Thorne took in with one long look the blooming fairness of the girl Gaston Arbuthnot had married, then dropping Dinah’s hands, she turned coolly away. ‘I heard of your arrival here, Mr. Arbuthnot, from Colonel de Gourmet.’ ‘Colonel de Gourmet is----’ ‘Our island authority in all matters of taste, from the dressing of a salad to the delivery of a sermon. He said you looked like a man who would understand the meaning of the word “dinner.” That is the highest praise Colonel de Gourmet can give.’ ‘I appreciate the compliment immensely.’ ‘You must appreciate the Colonel by meeting him at our house. Somehow, I fancied you were alone. I thought stupidly, you had come to Guernsey for art reasons, and as a bachelor.’ So her visit was deliberately not intended for the wife; after such a declaration, could not involve the necessity of the wife’s future acquaintance! The keen blood quickened on Dinah’s cheek. Dinah’s husband was unmoved. Should it be counted as strength or as weakness, as fault or as virtue, that no small feminine by-thrust at his lowly-born wife ever shook the outward composure of Gaston Arbuthnot? ‘No, Dinah is with me. We are just starting on somewhat lengthy travels. We mean to spend the early summer here, Mrs. Thorne. In autumn we shall ramble leisurely on towards the South of France, and in winter make a settlement of some kind in Florence. In Florence, greatly to my wife’s satisfaction, I am pledged to do serious work.’ ‘Yes! And is it true, then, that you are a sculptor by profession, that you have become an artist to the exclusion of other aims! Of course there is a way of looking at things which makes such a life seem the most charming possible.’ Mrs. Thorne clasped her thin clever hands as though entering some mysterious general protest against art and its followers. ‘And still, one has regrets. I was foolishly ambitious about you, if you remember, Mr. Arbuthnot. In our romantic boy-and-girl Paris days, I quite thought you were to get into Parliament. To be the people’s friend. A kind of second Mirabeau. To make a tremendous name.’ Gaston Arbuthnot’s face for a second betrayed sincere perplexity. When was Linda Constantia ambitious in her hopes about his intellectual future! At what period of that shallow flirtation, a decade of years ago, could dreams of a seat in the House of Commons, and of Parliamentary victories, have been possible to her? ‘I am open to flattery, Mrs. Thorne. When does a mediocre man not glory in the fine things which, according to his friends, he might have done? Yet it seems to me I never held a political opinion in my life.’ ‘You once held very strong ones. Why, in a letter you wrote me after--after we had said good-bye in Paris, you were so nobly warm, I remember, about the English lower classes! Our sisters and brothers in the alleys, whose claims that dear, immortal Mrs. Browning so beautifully reveals to us.’