Old Cassandra took off her leather driving gloves; she pressed out their folds slowly. Then she examined a signet-ring, masculine in size and device, which was always worn by her on the third finger of the left hand. ‘Mr. Arbuthnot comes to visit you, professionally, three days a week.’ Speaking thus she did not lift her eyes to the young girl’s face. ‘He comes to Tintajeux at other times, naturally?’ ‘He came on that first evening when we engaged him--I mean, when Mr. Arbuthnot was good enough to promise to read with me. It was fine warm weather, you must remember--the night before you left for Sark. Grandpapa invited Mr. Arbuthnot to drink tea with us, and afterwards I walked as far as the Hüets, to put him on the right track for getting home by Gros Nez.’ ‘He speaks to you, frequently, of the poor, stay-at-home Griselda wife, I make no doubt.’ The blood rose up, less at the question than at Cassandra’s way of putting it, to Marjorie’s cheeks. ‘My tutor has never spoken to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot. You decided, Miss Tighe, that day when we talked it over under the cedars, that there might be an indelicacy in my mentioning her too abruptly. And during our hours of reading we work, and work hard. I think,’ said Marjorie, lifting her small face aloft, ‘that as regards the learning of classics and Euclid, it matters nothing to me whether Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot stay at home or walk abroad.’ ‘Mrs. _Geoffrey_!’ repeated Cassandra. ‘Oh, that certainly is not the name. I may have led you wrong in the first instance. Geoffrey is not the name of the man people talk so much about.’ Marjorie walked off to the schoolroom, from whence she presently returned with Geoffrey’s card, one that he had enclosed in his first stiff business note to the heiress of Tintajeux. ‘Samson, Samuel, Cyril. I am nearly sure of Samson,’ mused Cassandra. ‘Accuracy as to names and dates was a kind of heirloom in our family.’ ‘The name of my coach is Geoffrey,’ said Marjorie Bartrand. ‘Behold it, Miss Tighe, in black and white--Geoffrey Arbuthnot, B.A., Cantab.’ ‘I cannot make this out at all. The whole thing is so fresh in my memory. Coming up from the harbour I called in at Miller’s. It was but human to ask that poor, weak, unreliable woman about her throat. Well, although she has swallowed Dr. Thorne’s drugs, Marjorie, she is recovering. Nature is so perverse in these chronic invalids.’ ‘Recovering sufficiently to retail a fruity bit of gossip, which Miss Tighe enjoyed. I wonder whether the world was as scandal-loving in _your_ days?’ said Marjorie, addressing the calm-eyed group of Bartrands beside the chimneypiece. ‘You were not a moral generation. Perhaps when glass heads were universal, stone-throwing was less in vogue.’