‘I believe I am no judge of beauty. Gaston tells me frequently to admire people who to my taste are horrible monsters--“type Rubens,” I think he calls them. It requires an education to admire the “type Rubens.” One does not like a face, or one does like it--too much, perhaps, for one’s own peace.’ Geff spoke in a tone that brought the blood into Marjorie’s cheeks. The girl had blushed with other feelings could she have guessed--she, who would accept second love from no man--that at this moment his thoughts had wandered to a remote Cambridgeshire village, and to the peace of mind he lost there! ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot seems to me so thrown away--you must let me speak, although I know it is a subject on which you can bear no contradiction--so cruelly thrown away upon a man like your cousin Gaston.’ ‘No other woman would suit my cousin Gaston half as well.’ ‘That is the true man’s way of putting things. “Suit Gaston.” Would not a less Frenchified, less universally popular husband, suit Dinah better?’ ‘I am quite sure Dinah, who should be a competent judge, would answer “No.” Miss Bartrand,’ broke off Geoffrey, with notable directness and point, ‘I wonder why you and I are discussing other people’s happiness just at an hour when we ought to be thinking about our own?’ The remark was made with Geff’s usual seriousness. But Marjorie, reading between the lines, discerned some obvious joke therein. She laughed until the high-banked road along which they walked re-echoed to her fresh voice. Then starting at a brisk run, she took flight along a foot-track which, diverging from the chaussée, led through a couple of breast-high cornfields, across a corner of the common land, to Tintajeux. Untaught daughter of nature though she was, Marjorie knew that every moment brought the supreme one nearer in which Geoffrey Arbuthnot must speak to her of love. Although the conclusion was foregone, although her whole girlish fancy was won, she strove, with such might as she possessed, to stave that moment off. For she knew that she was a traitress to her cause, an apostate from the man-despising creed in which, recollecting the sins of Major Tredennis, she had gloried. Fast as her limbs would bear her the girl sped on, Geff Arbuthnot, with swinging, slow run, nicely adjusted to her pace, following half a dozen yards behind. ‘Renegade!’ every bush along the familiar path cried aloud to her. ‘Renegade,’ whispered the stream trickling down between rushy banks, through beds of thick forget-me-nots, to the shore. The cornfields were soon passed. They reached the breezy bit of moor above the Hüets. The ravine where the water-lanes met lay in purple shadow: all around was warm and joyous sunshine. A scent of fern and wild thyme filled the air. Far away the tide curled round the dark base of the Gros Nez range. The choughs and daws were flying across the face of the cliffs. The gulls poised and swooped, flashes of intense white against the background of green sea.