Now it was a peculiarity belonging to Gaston Arbuthnot’s character that he was apt to mystify every human creature, his cousin Geoffrey excepted, with whom his relations were near. The more intimate you became with this man the less firm seemed the moral grip by which you held him. Dinah’s over-diffident heart perpetually doubted the stability of his love. She was unhappy with him, dreading lest, in her society, he were not enough amused. She was unhappy away from him, dreading lest in her absence he were amused too well! Linda Thorne was equally at fault as to the texture of his friendship. Long years ago, Gaston Arbuthnot’s boyish good looks--perhaps it must be owned, Gaston Arbuthnot’s devoted attentions--won all of tender sentiment that Linda, then a neglected, overworked governess, had to give. She had been to India in the interval. She had learnt the market worth of sentiment. There was Dr. Thorne ... Rahnee! There were her duties, real and histrionic, to fill her life. And the days of her youth had reached the flickering hour before twilight. But Linda had not forgiven Gaston Arbuthnot. She had not forgotten how near she once came to loving him. And she was sorely, unreasonably wounded, through vanity rather than through feeling, by Dinah’s fresh and girlish charm. An anomalous position; perhaps, a commoner one than some young wives, morbidly sensitive as to alien influence over their husbands, may suspect. ‘So there has been a small imbroglio about Wednesday’s arrangements! I cannot tell you how glad I am to be relieved from a weight of sea-going responsibility. Mrs. Arbuthnot, I am sure, will enact hostess for our young subalterns so much more gracefully than I could. She is a good sailor, doubtless?’ Gaston had taken up a morsel of drawing-paper and some red chalk--every kind of artistic appliance had found its way, of late, into Mrs. Thorne’s drawing-room--some ideal woman’s face with beauty, with anger on it, was growing into life under his hand. He finished, in a few delicate, subtle touches, the shadow between a low Greek brow and eyelid ere he spoke. ‘Dinah is a famous sailor. We look back to a little Scottish yachting tour we made, soon after our marriage, as about the best time of our lives.’ Linda Thorne, a fair decipherer of surface feeling in general, could gather absolutely nothing from Gaston’s level tone. He raised his eyes, during a steady second or two, from his paper; he met her interrogative glance with one of strict neutrality. ‘I am relieved and at the same time stupidly inquisitive. Now, why in the name of all things truthful, did you not mention that Mrs. Arbuthnot meant to go with us on Wednesday?’ Gaston was silent; too absorbed perhaps in his creation, slight chalk sketch though it was, to give heed to matter so unimportant as this which Linda pressed upon him. ‘Possibly you were not aware that Mrs. Arbuthnot _was_ going!’ Linda Thorne hazarded the remark with a suspicion of innocent malice.