his handsome face.

"Oh, please do!" she said.

She was lying on a couch under a purple rug belonging to Isabel. Very
fragile and weak she looked, but her face was flushed and eager, her eyes
alight with welcome. She thought he had never looked so splendid, so
godlike, as at that moment. She wanted to hold out both her arms to him
and be borne upward to Olympus in his embrace.

He came forward with his easy carriage and stood beside her. His smile
was one of kindly indulgence. He looked down at her as he might have
looked upon an infant.

An uneasy sense of her own insignificance went through Dinah. She could
not remember that he had ever regarded her thus before. A faint, faint
throb of resentment also pulsed through her. His attitude was so
suggestive of the mere casual acquaintance. Surely--surely he had not
forgotten!

"Won't you sit down?" she asked in a small voice that was quite
unconsciously formal.

He seated himself in the chair that had been placed at her side. "So they
have left you behind to be mended, have they?" he said. "I hope it is a
satisfactory process, is it?"

She had meant to give him her hand, but as he did not seem to expect it
she refrained from doing so. A great longing to cover her face and burst
into tears took possession of her; she resisted it frantically, with all
her strength.

"Oh yes, I am getting better, thank you," she said, in a voice that
quivered in spite of her. "I am afraid I have been a great nuisance to
everybody. I am sure the de Vignes thought so; and--and--I expect you do
too."

She could not keep the tears from springing to her eyes, strive as she
would. He was so different--so different. He might have been a total
stranger, sitting there beside her.

Yet as he looked at her, she felt something of the old quick thrill; for
the blue eyes regarded her with a slightly warmer interest as he said, "I
can't answer for the de Vignes of course, but it doesn't seem to me that
either they or I have had much cause for complaint. I shouldn't fret
about that if I were you."

She commanded herself with an effort. "I don't. Only it isn't nice to
feel a burden to anyone, is it? You wouldn't like it, would you?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said, with his easy arrogance. "I think I should
expect to be waited on if I were ill. You've had rather a bad time, I'm
afraid. But you haven't missed much. The weather has been villainous."

"I've missed all the dances," said Dinah, stifl