A length of folded ribbon met her sight; a tiny bouquet, odorous still with yesterday’s sweetness, of briar and of heliotrope; a sheet of notepaper upon which one word was written. Bare hints--outlines of some unknown story, which jealous passion might easily colour, fill up with vivid detail, endow with pulsating life! After the first moment’s shock, Dinah stood like a woman petrified. Her eyes were fixed on the _one word_--never meant for their perusal! Her face was bloodless. She felt cold, stupefied with anger. It seemed to her that she could not drag herself from the spot where this hateful, sure light had dispelled her darkness for ever. She waited--as though waiting could avail her! At last the striking of a clock caused her to start. She had got to dress, she remembered, to face men and women, to dine--for Gaston’s sake. With an effort that almost cost her bodily pain, Dinah made her way into her bedroom. She locked, double locked the door. Then holding the envelope and its contents between her shivering hands, she tried to force herself into calmness, to resolve on conduct, if that were possible, which should be just to herself and to her husband. He was guilty of no actual wrong-doing. This thought presented itself, in clear pure light, amidst all the dusky half-shades of her mind. Gaston was fickle, neglectful of herself, too easily led captive along the road of pleasure. Worse things than these she could never think of him. To the moment of her death he must remain her best beloved and her lord; the one man, could the hour of choosing come again, whom she would choose out of ten thousand. She did not accuse Gaston of wrong. She sought not to blacken Linda. For aught she knew, these delicately sentimental friendships, these intimacies which permitted tender expression--the yielding of a ribbon or a flower!--might, in the world above her head, be held innocent. What she did know was that she, Dinah, belonged not to that world, desired no further education in its usages. A comedy ... an amusing drawing-room charade, perhaps ... was in course of rehearsal between a tired Indian lady, needing sensation, and her husband. She would not passively, ignobly stand by, a spectator. She would drag out her life of paltry distrust no longer. Gaston’s formal leave must be asked for, before she started; money also--enough to take her from Guernsey to the Devonshire moors. This would be all. Briefly, if Heaven would help her, honestly, she would tell Gaston what wish lay next her heart. And Gaston was not likely to thwart her! By Monday--oh, that it could be earlier--she would go back to her own people, to a life shone on by no sun, watered by no shower, a life shut out from keen pleasure as from keen humiliation for evermore.