The first dressing-bell was ringing by the time he reached the hotel. Dinah’s parlour was empty; her embroidery frame--silver paper shrouding its impossible forget-me-nots and auriculas from the light of heaven--stood on her work-table. Passing into the adjoining room without knocking, Mr. Arbuthnot beheld a sight not new to him, save as regarded the hour of the day--Dinah on her knees beside her bed, her head bowed, her face hidden between her hands. She rose up hurriedly at the sound of her husband’s entrance. She brushed away some tell-tale tears, not, however, before Gaston’s quick glance had had opportunity to detect them. All men dislike the sight of a wife in tears. A small minority may dislike the sight of a wife on her knees. Gaston Arbuthnot shared both prejudices. He concealed his irritation under a kiss--cold, mechanical, the recipient felt those kisses to be--bestowed on each of Dinah’s flushing cheeks. ‘I beg a thousand pardons for disturbing you at your prayers, my dear, but----’ ‘I was not praying. I wish I had been,’ interrupted Dinah promptly. ‘To pray, one’s heart must be at rest.’ Now Gaston Arbuthnot looked upon all strong and unpleasant emotion with a feeling bordering on actual repugnance. And Dinah’s voice had that in it which threatened storm. His irritation grew. ‘I beg your pardon for interrupting a mood not calm enough for prayer (although it required a prayerful attitude), yet sad enough for tears. That terrible habit of weeping will wear away even your good looks in time, Dinah.’ A time far distant, surely! Never had she been fairer in Gaston’s sight than at this moment, in her fresh cambric dinner dress, with her hair like a nimbus of gold around her forehead, with a colour vermeil as any Italian dawn on the cheeks his lips had newly touched. ‘I should like to keep my good looks till I am fifty years old, if good looks were only faithful servants, if they brought one only a taste of real happiness. As it is----’ ‘My dear girl, although you chance to be a little out of temper with life, don’t forget you have a husband. I am a vain man--so you and Geff tell me--and the chief of all my vanities is, that I am blest with a handsome wife.’ ‘Out of temper with life? I think not, Gaston. Life has been sent me, the rugged with the smooth, and I must learn to fit myself to both. If I had been clever I should have learnt my lesson long ago. I must shape myself to things as they are, not want to shape them according to my poor village notions. I was trying to reason about it all just now.’ ‘In an attitude that I misunderstood,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘I go on my knees when I need to think, clearly and humbly. I would not dare to say at such times that I pray.’ Talk like this was beneath, or above, Gaston Arbuthnot’s level. He told her so plainly.