‘And she has been kind enough to murmur an experimental “Yes,” though no one acknowledges to having asked her. (A suspicion goes about that it was Arbuthnot!) But Mrs. Thorne’s qualities are not sea-going. She has not the marine foot, as your husband would say. She and the Doctor will be of our party, of course, but Linda could never play the part of hostess for us. Oscar Jones took her and the de Carteret girls out sand-eeling--you know little Oscar, the one handsome fellow in the regiment?--and Mrs. Linda was sea-sick straight through the jolliest night of May moonlight. You like the ocean, I am sure, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ ‘Yes, I like it. Years ago, when we had not long been married, Mr. Arbuthnot hired a little cutter yacht. We spent four weeks at sea off the coast of Scotland. They were the happiest weeks of my life.’ Dinah said this with her accustomed quiet reserve. Yet, had Lord Rex known her better, he might have discerned a tremor in her voice as she recalled those far-off days--days when neither mistrust nor coldness had marred the first ineffable joy of her love for Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘That is all right; I am a second Byron myself. The sea is my passion. It would have been a sort of blow--I hope you understand me when I say that it would have been a sort of blow--to hear you say you were a bad sailor.’ Dinah, who never helped out a flattering speech, direct or implied, looked away from him. ‘A suspicion goes about that it was Arbuthnot.’ The words rang in her ears; light words, heedlessly spoken, yet destined to swell the total with which Gaston Arbuthnot was already too heavily credited on the balance-sheet of his wife’s heart. ‘We may count upon you, may we not? Arbuthnot has accepted for himself. Now we want your promise. If the weather continues like this we may rely upon seeing you on board the _Princess_ next Wednesday?’ ‘You have not explained what seeing me on board the _Princess_ means.’ Dinah’s tone was evasive. Probably, thought Lord Rex, the puritanical conscience required time to collect itself! ‘I don’t know, at my staid age,’ she added, ‘that I should countenance you. What did you say about carrying all the nice-looking people in Guernsey out to sea?’