‘Lord Rex Basire is never amusing when he talks to me.’ ‘Then I congratulate you on your proficiency in seeming amused. It ranks high as a difficult social art, even among veterans.’ ‘Gaston!’ she exclaimed, a new and poignant doubt making itself felt. ‘Dinah.’ ‘I don’t know what to think of your tone. Why have you never said a word, never looked at me during all these hours? Are you offended?’ ‘On the contrary,’ retorted Gaston. They were now out of sight, out of earshot of everybody. As he spoke, Arbuthnot withdrew his hand from his wife’s arm. ‘I am thoroughly your debtor. It was the sense of my indebtedness that made me bring you here. I wished to thank you without an audience, quietly.’ ‘To thank _me_,’ stammered Dinah, in a sort of breathless way. ‘For--for----’ she broke off, reddening violently. Gaston watched her. ‘For your solicitude, your kindly tact! That idea of despatching the old lady in the scarlet cloak to chaperon me was boldly original, a fine intuition of wifely vigilance----’ ‘Gaston! I never----’ ‘Yet scarcely the sort of vigilance that passes current in a commonplace and scoffing world. If you had the smallest spark of humour, Dinah--that missing sense! that one little flaw in your character!--you would see things as the commonplace scoffing world sees them.’ ‘Should I?’ ‘You would divine that, under no possible circumstances--really it would be well to remember this for the rest of our mortal lives--under no circumstances can I require an old lady, with or without a scarlet cloak, as my chaperon.’ A different woman to Dinah might here have turned the tables on Gaston Arbuthnot, have stoutly, truthfully disavowed responsibility as to Cassandra Tighe’s movements. Dinah was too transparently honest to defend herself as to the letter, knowing that she had been an accessory in the spirit. ‘When the time was so short--ten minutes more, Gaston, and the _Princess_ would have started without you--I felt that my heart must stop. Miss Tighe, any one, could have seen on my face what I suffered.’ ‘I have no doubt that “any one” could, and did see it,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot, with grave displeasure. ‘It would not occur to you to make an effort at decent self-control, whatever ridicule you might be bringing upon others. Does it never strike you, Dinah,’ he went on, unjustly, ‘that other women have human sensibilities as well as yourself--Linda Thorne, for instance? She rushed off, poor thing, in the greatest agitation at the first whisper of the Doctor’s disappearance, fearing nothing from Mrs. Grundy, fearing all things for her husband. Was it generous, charitable, do you think, to let your disapprobation be written, so that he who ran might read, upon your face?’ ‘I think,’ said Dinah, faithfully, ‘that Mrs. Thorne felt no agitation whatsoever.’ Gaston also thought so. It was a point he would not commit himself to argue out.