‘No, Mr. Arbuthnot is dining at the Fort.’ ‘And Mr. Geoffrey will not return till late. Then I may be allowed to fill this vacant chair? Thank you, madam. I should not have ventured to place a stranger next Mrs. Arbuthnot without permission.’ A minute later Dinah discovered--no stranger, but her husband’s friend, Lord Rex Basire, at her side. CHAPTER XLII EMANCIPATION Dinah Arbuthnot’s face asked vividly for explanation. ‘Made sure Arbuthnot would be here--that is to say, _our_ Arbuthnot’--Lord Rex stammered; he showed embarrassment that sat on him oddly, as he apologised for his uninvited presence. ‘The comings and goings of the Cambridge cousin are, naturally, beyond my powers of calculation.’ ‘Naturally,’ echoed Dinah. She remembered, with a pang of self-reproach, what manner of errand kept Geoffrey absent. ‘Strolled round here early--by accident, you know--thought I’d ask myself to dinner with your husband. Clean forgot, till Miller or some one put it into my head, it was guest night. That was half an hour ago. Ought to have started off, instanter, to Fort-William.’ ‘And why, pray, did you not do so?’ ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, can you ask me!’ Rex Basire’s tone adequately supplemented his words. And Dinah’s pulse quickened. She was on the threshold, she remembered, of a new, an emancipated life. A wife who lives apart from her husband must accept her position, grow used to many things, to every complexion of whisper among the rest. That is the world’s immutable sentence. Away from Gaston, divorced from the arm which, during four years, had cradled her in warm safety--she must learn, like other unloved women, to rely on her own strength--her strength and the chivalry of all such knights-errant, such Rex Basires, as should cross her path! About the chivalry more might have to be learnt, hereafter. Dinah realised, before the first step of her downward journey was taken, that her strength was weakness. She felt as though all eyes around the table must watch her with suspicion, read her secret. Rex Basire’s tone of assured admiration brought the blood miserably, shamefully to her cheeks. He saw and misinterpreted the blush. ‘Thought, you know, as there was a rumour of the cousin’s absence, I should have a chance of getting next you.’ ‘You would have been better amused elsewhere, my lord. With Geff I can talk or be silent as I like. Geff does not mind.’ Lord Rex on this made some whispered hit at the ‘model cousin’s’ excellence. As he ate his half cold soup murmured comparisons fell from him as to the men who are made of flesh and blood, poor devils! and the other men, too good for this world, who are made of ice, yes, ice, by Jove! But he was not great at covert allusion. The metaphorical ice got mixed with the metaphorical flesh and blood: his nominatives were nowhere. Breaking down, rather ignominiously, Lord Rex smothered his failure under a capacious sigh.