‘Dinah’s is a nature laid on large lines. She is the best possible wife for such a light-ballasted man as I.’ He made this confession of faith with genuine earnestness, feeling, rather than acknowledging he felt, that the speech set his conscience satisfactorily at rest ‘Goodness matters a great deal more, does it not, Mrs. Thorne, than a beautiful face?’ ‘Possibly. I am ready to accept what you say. Tell me only you are not offended by my outspoken admiration,’ she went on. ‘Surely I may presume sufficiently on old--old acquaintance, to congratulate you on your marriage, on the domestic sunshine of your life?’ ‘It is delightful to feel that your heart is warm as ever! As a matter of priority, congratulations, Mrs. Thorne, were due to you first. Dinah and I have been married three years and three quarters, while you----’ ‘Oh, it makes me too old a woman to be precise about dates,’ said Linda, looking away from him. ‘My daughter, although she retains her ayah and her spoilt Indian ways, is a big girl, almost four years old. I hope you will visit The Bungalow soon for Rahnee’s sake.’ ‘The Bungalow being----’ ‘The straggling, white, one-storied place which you see low down under the hill to the right. That is my home, built entirely from Doctor Thorne’s own plans. The ugliest house, every honest person who sees it admits, in Guernsey.’ ‘Not in its interior. I am certain a house inhabited by you could not be ugly.’ ‘Prettily said. Why, pray, in the present æsthetic age, cut off’ as we are from the poetic upholstery of London, should a house inhabited by me not be a great deal uglier than other people’s?’ ‘I decline, at this hour of the morning, to be logical. One has an instinct in such things.’ ‘Rahnee, at least, is not ugly. I am not afraid of your judgment on our little Rahnee. Now, what is to-day?’ Gaston Arbuthnot believed it to be the fourteenth day of June, in the year of grace 188--. ‘Well, then’--Mrs. Thorne’s voice sank so as to be only half a tone higher than a whisper--‘will you dine with us this evening, at half-past seven? I believe,’ added Linda vaguely, ‘that one or two of the artillery officers may be coming to us. We do not entertain. I make a point of telling everybody that. Doctor Thorne and I do not entertain. But if our friends care to drop in unexpectedly, to eat our roast mutton with us, and smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards, there we are.’ It was to be a bachelor party, then. Dinah might possibly have been invited to eat roast mutton at Mrs. Thorne’s table. She could, under no circumstances, be asked to smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards. But Gaston accepted with frank cordiality. During the years of his married life it had so grown to be a matter of course that Dinah, dear good girl! should never go into the world, that even the form of hesitation at leaving her had been dropped on the part of Dinah’s husband.