‘Rahnee, I command! Oh! dear--dear, what a trial children are at a high temperature! Well, then, if you won’t be good,’--Linda drew from her pocket a little silvery packet tied with cherry-coloured ribbon--‘if Rahnee won’t be a good girl.... What does she think mamma has brought her from town?’ ‘Tandy!’ cried Rahnee, with a sudden accession of repentant wisdom. ‘Rahnee not tease poor Missy But’not no more.’ And bestowing two or three resonant kisses on Gaston, the child slid down out of his arms. She gave her mother a careless caress, then vanished, hiding herself and her ‘tandy’ under the ayah’s ample cotton cloak, into The Bungalow. ‘She really is not a bad little monkey,’ said Linda, who thoroughly believed in her own system of education. ‘Touch Rahnee’s feelings and you can at once bring her to obedience. Feeling is the grand requisite in a child’s nature.’ ‘Who would not be virtuous,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, ‘if virtue were always rewarded by providential sugar candy?’ ‘And I so wanted to have a few minutes’ quiet talk with you. Do you know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I am ... seriously afraid’--for once Linda Thorne’s words came slow and haltingly--‘seriously afraid ... you will pardon me, I hope, for saying this--that Mrs. Arbuthnot cannot be well.’ ‘_Dinah!_ Why, she was fresh as a lily when I parted from her this morning. I have indirectly heard of her looking her best since----’ But Gaston’s face was unsmiling. The moment when he shuffled and re-shuffled the écarté packs, half a dozen men crowding to the verandah of Colonel de Gourmet’s drawing-room, returned upon him with significant and disagreeable clearness. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is looking exquisite. I thought I had never admired her so much as in her Quaker dress, her simple country hat! Still, there may be a bloom which exceeds health, a white which is too transparent. Your wife strikes me--how shall I describe her state--as low-spirited, hysterical!’ ‘She eats and sleeps well. She can walk half round the island. Difficult to conceive of a young woman with Dinah’s magnificent constitution as hysterical!’ ‘But she is so. I met Mrs. Arbuthnot on my way down from Miller’s Hotel. I told her about our foolish wager, and how I had honestly called to discharge my debt. A propos de bottes, you will find your gloves on a corner of the mantlepiece.’ ‘And Dinah?’ ‘Dinah, I was afraid, looked like weeping, under the broad light of day, in the open street.’ ‘Impossible! She is little given to idle tears, even when cause exists for shedding them.’ Gaston had reddened. He made the statement in the quiet tone of a man sure of his facts. ‘I felt as though I had committed some horrible crime--and of course, when people’s nerves are unstrung, it is sheer cruelty to attempt to argue with them. Our soft Guernsey air may be at the root of the mischief. Half the disorders in these Channel places are nervous ones.’