Shortly before ten o’clock, entered Geoffrey. The parlour lamps were not lit. Dinah’s figure was in dense shadow as she leaned, absorbed in her own thoughts, beside the open window. Geoffrey, believing the room empty, sang under his breath, as he groped his way across to the mantelshelf; no very distinguishable tune--an ear for music was not among Geff’s gifts--but with sufficient of a quick, triplet measure in it to recall a Spanish Barcadero that Marjorie Bartrand was fond of singing to herself. To Dinah’s sick heart the song was consciously wounding. She had been so long used to Geff’s undivided homage, that sense of power had, little by little, grown into tyranny, gentle rose-leaf tyranny, whose weight Geoffrey’s broad shoulders bore without effort, and yet having in its nature one of tyranny’s inalienable qualities, lack of justice. ‘Always in spirits, Geoffrey!’ The reproach came to him through the gloom. ‘It is good to think, whether the day is dark or shining, our cousin Geoffrey can always sing.’ Geoffrey was at her side in a moment. ‘It is cruel to speak of my horrible groanings as singing, Mrs. Arbuthnot; crueller still to hint of them as betokening good spirits. Where is Gaston? You are back earlier than I expected from your walk to Roscoff.’ ‘The walk fell through. I shall have to border my work with a rose pattern bought in the shops. Gaston was obliged to dine at Dr. Thorne’s. He made the engagement, of course, without thinking of our walk. I ought never to have counted on those Roscoff wild roses. I----’ Dinah’s voice lapsed, brokenly, into silence. ‘If you would like the roses, you can have them by breakfast to-morrow,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Few things I should enjoy better than a six-mile trudge in the early morning.’ ‘No, Geoffrey, no. Gaston always tells me that my bought patterns are atrocious, and the walk was planned by him, and he was to have sketched from the fresh briars by lamplight. My heart in it all is over. The Roscoff roses may go!’ As so much of weightier delight had been allowed to go, negligently, irrevocably, out of Dinah Arbuthnot’s life. Dinah herself might not suggest the thought, but to Geoffrey’s mind it was a vivid, a pathetic one. ‘And why should you not take my escort? You know I am never burthened with engagements. Let us go to Roscoff to-morrow. You owe Miss Bartrand a visit. Well, we will take Tintajeux on our road, and make Marjorie show us the way to Roscoff Common.’ ‘Miss Bartrand will not expect me to return her visit. She came here because--because you, dear Geff, with or without words, bade her come! I should never have courage to face the grandfather. Gaston would be the right person to call on the Seigneur of Tintajeux.’ ‘The Seigneur of Tintajeux might think otherwise,’ Geoffrey laughed. ‘Old Andros Bartrand made minute inquiries about Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot the last time I saw him.’