Madonna. The word in connection with poor Dinah must awaken instant visions of sock-knitting and of pinafore-mending! Gaston’s wife was, in truth, a very ideal of sweet and gracious motherhood. Gladly you would have imagined her, girt round by a swarm of toddlers, with eyes and cheeks like her own, to be bequeathed, a priceless heirloom, to future generations. But Dinah had no living child. And round Dinah’s mouth might be discerned lines that should certainly not have found their way thither at two-and-twenty. And in Dinah’s low country voice there was a lilt at times of unexpected sadness. Round some corner of her path Dull Care, you felt, must lurk, stealthily watchful. At some point in the outward and visible sunshine of her married life there must be a blot of shadow. A woman like Dinah could be hit through her affections only. Her affections were centred painfully--I had almost written morbidly--on one subject. And that subject was Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, her husband. ‘If Miss Bartrand be a hater of men, a scorner of marriage, so much the easier prospect for me,’ said Geoffrey. ‘At the present time I look upon myself as an educational machine to be hired out at so much an hour. I have no more mind to put on company manners for Miss Marjorie Bartrand than for any thick-headed fresher I was vainly endeavouring to get through Little Go.’ ‘You? It depends, rather, on what Miss Marjorie Bartrand has a mind for,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, with the certainty born of larger experience. ‘Happily, the wording of the advertisement shows that Miss Bartrand means work. We have it here.’ Geoffrey looked down the columns of a small, blue, badly-printed local newspaper, half French, half English, that lay open on the breakfast table. “Tutor wanted. I, Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux, need a coach to prepare me for Girton. Classics and mathematics. Six hours a week.--Apply, personally, at Tintajeux Manoir, after six P.M. An Oxford or Cambridge man preferred.”’ ‘Does any one know if Marjorie Bartrand is handsome?’ exclaimed Gaston, with sudden animation. ‘Dinah, I adjure you to find out the truth in this matter. The women of the hotel would at least repeat the popular island beliefs. “An Oxford or Cambridge man preferred.” The crystalline artfulness of the clause touches one, from a girl who makes pretence at misanthropy.’ ‘But surely, Gaston, you would not----’ ‘I would do most things. My classics were unfairly judged of by my college tutor. My mathematics,’ Gaston confessed, with his air of unreliable fatuity, ‘never existed. Still, I kept all my terms, except, of course, the hunting terms. And I succeeded--as far as I went! If I passed no exams., I was at least never spun. I am as much a Cambridge man as Geoffrey is. I feel more than disposed to apply to Miss Marjorie Bartrand myself.’ The muscles about Dinah Arbuthnot’s delicately-carved mouth trembled.