‘You would tire before the first lesson was over,’ said Geff, watching Dinah, while he addressed Dinah’s husband. ‘You want my incentive, Gaston, filthy lucre. My terms as a coach in Guernsey are five shillings an hour. Five sixes are thirty. Yes, reading classics and mathematics with Miss Bartrand will just pay half my weekly hotel bill, supposing I am not lucky enough to get other work.’ ‘And you don’t care a straw whether Marjorie Bartrand is pretty or plain? My dear Geff, if ever fortune brings you to the stage, take the part of Joseph Surface, for my sake. It would suit you to admiration.’ CHAPTER II POKER TALK Ere Geoffrey had had time to retaliate, a factor of no common importance was destined to enter the difficult problem of Dinah Arbuthnot’s happiness. Holding the corner of her apron before her lips, the jaunty French waitress tripped up a pathway leading from the hotel to the lime-shaded lawn, and placed a lady’s card between Gaston’s hands. ‘Une dame ... Mais, une petite dame qui demande Monsieur!’ And the serving-woman’s eyes took in the whole space of blue mid-heaven at a glance. Obviously this Norman waitress, with acumen derived from an older civilisation than ours, was mistress of the situation. In a second of time Dinah had glanced over her husband’s shoulder. ‘Mrs. Thorne. Who is Mrs. Thorne? What is that written in pencil? “_Née_ Linda Constantia Smythe.” Gaston, what is the meaning of “_Née_?”’ I am bound to add that Dinah pronounced the monosyllable as ‘knee.’ And a red spot showed on Gaston Arbuthnot’s cheek. From his precocious boyhood up, it had been a belief of Gaston’s that lady-killing was an open accomplishment; the established means of defence as much an art to be learnt as the means of attack. And still, at the sight of those poor pencil-marks, at the thought of the youthful evenings when Linda Constantia used to hand him cups of weak tea, flavoured atrociously with cinnamon, in the salon of a remembered Paris entresol, the conscience of the man was touched. As Dinah’s voice asked the meaning of the word ‘knee,’ he changed colour. ‘Linda Constantia Smythe. What an absurdly small world we inhabit! You and I, my love, and Geoffrey, coming across poor Linda Constantia! Faites entrer cette dame,’ he added, turning to the waitress. ‘An absolutely forgotten acquaintance of a hundred years ago, Dinah--an acquaintance of times before I had heard your name. Linda married--no, did not marry; went out to India a spinster, and returned, poor soul! the wife of a Doctor Thorne. They say, in these Channel Islands, a man will run across every mortal he has known, or is fated to know, from his cradle to his grave.’ ‘You never told me of your acquaintance with any Linda Constantia Smythe. I wonder you recollected her name so instantly, Gaston.’