She scrutinised the moulding of her temples, the lines of her perfectly cut head. In outward proportion she thought there was not much amiss. It must be the quality of the brain that was poor. There must be an inherited peasant slowness, a bluntness of perception or wit, _something_ which disabled her from holding her own against the taught graces, the pliant, inexhaustible lightness of such an one as Linda Thorne. She might, if lowlier duties had fallen to her, have been clever enough to manage a house, to look after her husband’s interests, to bring up children. Amongst ladies and gentlemen--oh, the bitterness with which she uttered the titles of gentility half aloud--amongst ladies and gentlemen she had no place, no chance. And in her nature, not thoroughly sounded as yet, but of whose depths the last few days had vaguely informed her--in her innermost nature were evil things that a constant pressure of temptation might bring to the surface. She was not like Geoffrey. No ministering to others could fill her life, at any rate not while she was young, while the cry for love had the double keenness of a physical and of a moral want. If she continued a hanger-on of the world that Gaston loved,--‘some one who must be asked, don’t you know, occasionally, on sufferance,’--she would, one day, meet with homage, differently offered, and from a different man to Rex Basire. Was she sure that gratitude would not be awakened in her, then vanity? Was she sure she might not decline, step by step, to the condition of that most pitiable among women--a wife, true to the cold letter of her fealty, who has at once outlived her husband’s affection and the stings of her own self-contempt? Dinah started, guiltily, as the sharp clang of the dinner-bell roused her into final action. It took a good many minutes before she could recover sufficiently to face the ordeal that lay before her. At last, arming herself by the reflection that henceforth all life’s common actions must be gone through alone, and under a certain cloud of suspicion, she made her way to the dining-room. After a moment’s trembling heartsickness, she pushed back one of the double doors--entered. A hush, an involuntary suspension of knife and fork greeted her. The light through a western window fell full upon her golden head. The whiteness of her throat and hands was thrown into brilliant relief by the sombre dress she wore. ‘A saint of Holman Hunt’s--Early manner,’ thought a high-church curate, away on his four weeks’ holiday, and who never would know more of Dinah than the large sad eyes, the lips’ carnation, the nimbus of sunlight-coloured hair. ‘Can the complexion be absolutely real?’ floated through the brain of more than one duly aged and authorised feminine critic. Miller, with his professional little run and smile, came forward. He ushered Dinah Arbuthnot to her place. ‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot not expected, I believe?’ asked the host, as Dinah prepared to take her seat.