With a dim sensation of chill Geoffrey rang at the front door, and was ushered in by Sylvestre, a whole lever de rideau in the old butler’s expressive Norman smile, to the drawing-room. Here Marjorie, mutinous of spirit, but with a tenderly blushing face, awaited him. The western lights filtered through the half-closed Venetians. Above the cedar-shade gleamed as unstained a sweep of Atlantic as on the first evening that Geoffrey visited Tintajeux. The Petit Trianon baskets were filled with glorious Ducs de Rohan. The Cupids were hurling rose leaves at the guillotine. The miniature Bartrands, imperturbable as becomes mortals who have proved the nothingness of love as of life, seemed to glance with rather more philosophic amiability than usual from their frames. Well, all that Geoffrey saw or thought of was Marjorie. She looked prettier than he had ever seen her look, as she moved forward to greet him--softer, more womanly. For the girl, while she chafed, in imagination, under her new yoke, had spent a good hour before her glass ere her lover came. She had put on her one white dress of regulation length, had clasped an old-fashioned Spanish necklace round her throat, had pinned a little bunch of heliotrope and sweetbriar, mindful of the morning’s dominant odours, in her breast. A sense of his immense good fortune in having won her filled Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s heart. He took both her hands, looking down at their slender carving, with the connoisseurship of possession. He raised them within an inch of his lips. ‘I hope, Mr. Arbuthnot, you will pardon me for receiving you here?’ Marjorie asked him this with forced composure. ‘But I thought--I was not sure whether we were to read to-night or not.’ Geoffrey Arbuthnot involuntarily drew back. The glance which met him from his new sweetheart’s eyes was, he felt, cold. During an instant’s space, mastered by one of those shadowy infidelities of which we repent ere they take substance, Geff bethought him of eyes that never could look cold, in happiness or in trouble--English-coloured eyes from which, perhaps, the fire, the mind of Marjorie’s sapphire glance, were wanting. ‘I thought,’ she went on, with almost defiant ease, ‘that after yesterday’s idleness, our reading to-night must be a sham, so it would be unnecessary to see you in the schoolroom.’ ‘I can guess what that means,’ said Geoffrey, without letting loose her hands. ‘You have no work ready for me.’ ‘I have done some Virgil, fuller, I know, of faults than ever, but I thought, for one evening, sir, we might let Greek and Latin go.’ ‘Why not let them go for ever--as things that have had their use!’ cried Geoffrey Arbuthnot. ‘As things that have had their use? Are you speaking of _my classics_? You, who told me, a fortnight ago, I might come out in the third class of a tripos?’ ‘A fortnight ago is not to-day.’