pass, but the quivering fury of the man
seemed to emanate from him like the scorching draught from a blast
furnace. As Eustace said, he had got beyond himself,--so far beyond that
he was scarcely recognizable.

"Your advice be damned!" he flung back under his breath with a
concentrated bitterness that was terrible. "I shall follow my own
judgment."

Sir Eustace's mouth curled superciliously. He was angry too, though by no
means so angry as Scott. "Better look where you go all the same," he
observed, and passed him by, not without dignity and a secret sense of
relief.

The long and fruitless vigil of the night had taught him one thing at
least. Rome was not built in a day. He would not attempt the feat a
second time, though neither would he rest till he had gained his end.

As for Scott, he would have a reckoning with him presently--a strictly
private reckoning which should demonstrate once and for all who was
master.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ESCAPE OF THE PRISONER

Dinah spent her Sunday afternoon seated in a far corner of the verandah,
inditing a very laboured epistle to her mother--a very different affair
from the gay little missives she scribbled to her father every other day.

The letter to her mother was a duty which must of necessity be
accomplished, and perhaps in consequence she found it peculiarly
distasteful. She never knew what to say, being uncomfortably aware that a
detailed account of her doings would only give rise to drastic comment.
The glories of the mountains were wholly beyond her powers of description
when she knew that any extravagance of language would be at once termed
high-flown and ridiculous. The sleigh-drive of the day before was
disposed of in one sentence, and the dance of the evening could not be
mentioned at all. The memory of it was like a flame in her inner
consciousness. Her cheeks still burned at the thought, and her heart
leapt with a wild longing. When would he kiss her again, she wondered?
Ah, when, when?

There was another thought at the back of her wonder which she felt to be
presumptuous, but which nevertheless could not be kept completely in
abeyance. He had said that there would be no consequences; but--had he
really meant it? Was it possible ever to awake wholly from so perfect a
dream? Was it not rather the great reality of things to which she had
suddenly come, and all her past life a mere background of shadows? How
could she ever go back into that dimness no