‘Excellent, stupid, well-meaning, ill-acting young woman. And I have not a reprehensible sentiment at all towards her!’ Thoughts like this shot through Linda’s mind--Linda who really had it not in her to know sterner passion than a drawing-room malignity. ‘With her youth, her goodness, her complexion, her upper lip, to be jealous of poor, plain, cynical, elderly me! She needs a pretty sharp lesson. Children who cry for the moon deserve to get something worth crying for.’ Then, sweetly, ‘You seem interested in shells, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ she observed aloud. ‘You study conchology as a science, perhaps, under the Platonic auspices of that severe-looking cousin of yours, Geoffrey Arbuthnot of John’s.’ ‘I study nothing, unfortunately for myself. I am quite ignorant,’ said Dinah, lifting her face and meeting her tormentor’s eyes full. ‘I am picking up a shell or two,’ she added, ‘to keep as a remembrance of my day in Langrune.’ ‘I should say you would remember Langrune without any tangible memento,’ remarked Linda. ‘Rather ungrateful, you know, if you did not.’ ‘How, ungrateful?’ ‘Well, because the picnic was given unconditionally in honour of you----’ ‘I do not understand you,’ interrupted Dinah, with ill-judged warmth. ‘The party was planned before any one in Guernsey knew of my existence. I was asked accidentally--because I could be of use. Four or five girls had promised these young officers to come, and they wanted a married woman as a chaperon. This was what Lord Rex Basire said when he invited me on Monday.’ ‘And you believed him? You accepted out of pure kindness to faire tapisserie! Mrs. Arbuthnot, you are too amiable.’ By this time Dinah Arbuthnot’s face blazed from brow to chin. Her conscience, over-sensitive in the lightest matter, smote her sore. Was not a selfish longing for widened experience--nay, was not a certain distrust of Gaston, a contemptible sense of triumph over Linda--at the bottom of her acquiescence? ‘What unusually correct taste Dame Nature displays in her colouring this evening.’ Mrs. Thorne gazed with decent vacuity at the sky, and away from Dinah’s face. ‘Soft primrose, fading into pearly-green, with just those few vivid touches of deep crimson. It suggests thoughts for a ball dress. And still, beautiful though the effect is, I would rather not see that sort of shimmer on the water. If we come in for fog-banks somewhere about the Race of Alderney, it will matter little whether the picnic originated for the chaperons, or the chaperons for the picnic! How atrociously hungry this sort of thing makes one! Surely dinner-time must be drawing nigh.’ CHAPTER XXVII GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY ‘In two words, you have amused yourself, my dear.’ Under cover of the friendly twilight, Gaston Arbuthnot pressed his wife’s hand as it rested, a little shyly, on his arm. ‘A good sign for the future. You must enter into the world more, Dinah. You must cultivate this faculty for being amused; I desire nothing better.’