But the thunder-shower soon broke, the blue sky showed beyond. Tears, Marjorie Bartrand shed none. What sorrows had she of her own, what sweetheart, philandering or otherwise, to weep for? In regard of Geoffrey’s unknown wife, her brief-lived cynicism shifted, ere Cassandra had been gone an hour, into most genuine, most girl-like pity. After an outburst of temper, however scornful or unjust, there was ever in Marjorie’s heart a pungent and fiery fidelity which led her back, straight as magnet to steel, to her better self. That she should be disappointed in Geoffrey’s character was, she told herself, inevitable. What is there in any man that one should not, on close acquaintance, be disappointed in him? She had thought, judging from frank and plainly given confidences, that she knew, to a minute, how her tutor’s time was passed here in Guernsey. A little hospital work daily, Geff having met an old college friend in the house surgeon; a little study for his next Cambridge exam.; a good deal of boating; a good many walks round the island; three days a week, his reading with herself at Tintajeux. The picture had been a clear, a pleasant one in Marjorie’s sight. And now matter so alien as this of fashionable fine ladies, midnight domestic scenes, idlers speculating right and left, must come, unwelcome and ugly blots, on the canvas. She was disappointed in Geoffrey, personally. She felt, with the certainty of her age, that she could not work under him again with the bright unblemished interest of the past days. The change of feeling should be made up, Marjorie determined, by kindness shown to his wife. On Mrs. Arbuthnot she pledged herself to call to-morrow. Meantime, yes, during the forenoon lesson, she would assume a sterner manner towards this recreant husband, this sober-mannered student who, after all one hoped of him, was so little raised at heart above the pitiful vanities of his sex. And in the first place her own waist-ribbon must be summarily returned. This was Marjorie’s resolve when her head rested on its pillow. The waist-ribbon which, for fear of wounding Geoffrey’s feelings (his wife’s, perhaps, vicariously), she had suffered her tutor to keep, must be returned. Looking upon him in this new--alas! to Marjorie’s experienced mind, this too familiar--character of a philanderer, she could imagine him, married though he was, exhibiting that bit of ribbon among his companions as a trophy. ‘A gift, don’t you know, bestowed on one by a fair hand that shall be nameless.’ Or he might show it among the idle fine ladies--oh, the hot shame at Marjorie’s sleepy heart--the idle ladies in whose train he followed, while his wife, ignorant of Euclid or Greek, but not _devoid of human nature_, shed tears, not one single drop whereof the man was worthy, at home.