‘That is unfair to the world at large!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand, drawing up a chair to the table, where wools and silks lay heaped beside Dinah’s patiently progressing canvas. ‘Whatever hermit rules you observe elsewhere we shall make you break through them in Guernsey. I may look at your work? What intricate shading!’ She scanned the pathetic mass of Dinah’s stitches. ‘What a labour of love embroidery must be to you!’ ‘It helps pass the time,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. Wool-work fills up long hours that must else be empty. For I am not a scholar like you, Miss Bartrand, or like Geoffrey. And I only learnt the piano for two years at boarding school, not enough to play well.’ ‘Still, you do play?’ Marjorie glanced across at a piano that stood open. A goodly heap of music scores lay on a neighbouring ottoman. ‘Not in such a public place as an hotel. The notes you see there are my husband’s. Mr. Arbuthnot sings, as I dare say you know. He was thought, once on a time, to have the best tenor voice in Cambridge. Some day,’ said Dinah doubtfully, ‘I may play just well enough to accompany him. Unfortunately for me, the most beautiful of his songs are in French.’ Marjorie bethought her of Geoffrey’s accent, and was silent. ‘You will have good opportunities of learning French in Guernsey, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ ‘Geff wants me to take lessons. We have a French waitress here in the hotel, but she speaks too quick for me, so do my husband and--and Mrs. Thorne. I only understand the sort of French we learned at boarding school--the sort of French the girls talked together,’ said poor Dinah modestly. No books, no languages, no music; only cross-stitch, the counting of canvas threads, to fill one’s existence and one’s heart. And for life companion, thought Marjorie, a husband who frequented afternoon teas, who warbled ‘beautiful’ French ditties, in a bad accent, to audiences of women on the level of Linda Thorne! This vision of Geoffrey, as a singer, added the crowning touch to the girl’s disappointment in his character. Throughout the brief, bitter-tasting epoch when her unwilling hand wore an engagement-ring, she was accustomed to hear French sentiment in an English accent, and an English tenor voice, during at least three hours out of each twenty-four. At this moment the tinkling burthen of one frequent song came back, with a sense of repulsion that was pain, upon her heart. ‘Si vous n’avez rien à me dire Pourquoi passez-vous par ici?’ She remembered how the white hands of Major Tredennis used to rattle out the accompaniment of that song. She remembered the flower Major Tredennis wore at his button-hole the last day he visited Tintajeux--remembered, when she got knowledge of his treachery, how instant and far-reaching was her scorn.