She strove her best to be magnanimous, to give a valiant ‘yes’ to this self-propounded question. Then, even as she made the effort, a group of persons drew nigh from the direction of Petersport, at the sight of whom poor Dinah’s magnanimity and the wifely heart that beat in her breast stood instantly at variance. Her hands turned cold and rigid. A prophecy, rather than an actual living look of jealous anger, swept all the youthful gentleness from her face. A group of four persons: Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, Mrs. Thorne, the small daughter Rahnee, and a native nurse. Dazzling was Mrs. Linda in whatever furbelows and head gear local Parisian milliners had impressed on the feminine Sarnian mind as the ‘last thing out.’ Overdecked in embroidery and ribbons was Rahnee, a sorrowfully thin little child, with dark-ringed eyes, sallow cheeks, bangles on wrist. A typical Indian child, perverse, sickly, unruled, and who at the present moment was dancing, knowingly and deliberately, on her mother’s fragile flounces at every second step. ‘I am sure one ought to reform her.’ Thus Linda would make confession among her matron friends. ‘But what is to be done as long as you keep an ayah? You must reform the ayah first. That is just the one enthusiasm of humanity which is outside my reach, to reform an ayah.’ Rahnee, I repeat, danced persistently and with effect on her mother’s cobweb furbelows, as she capered and twisted herself along the street. Linda’s expression was as little honeyed as the expression of a coquette can ever be in the presence of a man she seeks to charm. The ayah vainly gesticulated, vainly uttered expostulations in unknown Eastern tongues from the rear. Breakdown and rout of one or other of the forces seemed imminent. Suddenly, just as they were passing the hotel--perhaps it was this incident stabbed Dinah’s unreasoning heart to the quick--Gaston came to the fore as mediator. Holding out both hands, Gaston Arbuthnot offered small Rahnee a place on his shoulder. Dinah could hear his pleasant voice, indicative of a mind content with its surroundings, as he began some sage nursery talk, all-engrossing, it would seem, to Rahnee’s soul. The thin arms closed round his neck, the tiny primrose-gloved fingers played with his hair. Mrs. Linda, a restored picture of amiable maternity, trotted behind. The ayah followed after; her black orbs pantomiming unspeakable things to such portions of the Guernsey world as had been chance witnesses of the scene. Then, domestic-wise, the group of four persons went their way.