‘Sober elders’--so Dinah realised, with a contracting heart--was a sufficiently elastic term to embrace Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Before landing from the boats, Gaston, with keen artistic vision, had descried some marvellously pretty fisher-girl among the crowd of French people on the rocks. Not a real red-handed, rough-haired fisher-girl, but the latest Worth idea of a duly got-up _pêcheuse_, the very subject, Gaston declared, for his own meretricious pencil. He must make a stealthy study of her forthwith. And indeed, at this present moment, not many paces distant from Mrs. Verschoyle and her devoted friend, Gaston Arbuthnot, sketch-book in hand, was already at work. Dinah lingered aimlessly. The desire of her heart was to stay beside her husband. Her pleasure would have been to watch his quick, clever pencil, to hear him discourse, in his light strain, about these foreigners, whose theatrical manners and dress, overwhelming to her in her ignorance, must to him be familiar. She felt that the brightness of her day would be clouded if she left Gaston! And yet, mused Dinah, troubled of spirit, _do_ wives, in society, hang jealously at their husband’s elbow, or watch their pencil, or listen to their talk with delight? Would she expose herself--far worse, would she expose Gaston to ridicule, by shirking the walking party? An expressive glance, shot from Mr. Arbuthnot’s eyes, set these questionings only too sharply at rest. ‘Look carefully in through the cottage windows, Dinah.’ He bestowed on her a little valedictory wave of two fingers. ‘Capital bits of ware are still to be unearthed in these parts of the world. If you see a likely cup or saucer, get Geoffrey to talk French for you.’ Gaston Arbuthnot was a dabbler in most branches of _bric-à-brac_, and up to the present date had never lost money by his dealings. ‘Mrs. Thorne, when we have got rid of these young people, I want you to criticise me. My beautiful fishing-girl grows too much like a figure from the mode-books.’ Linda Thorne, promptly obedient, took up her position at the artist’s side. CHAPTER XXIII A SWAGGER AND A SWORD