him with shining eyes. "It's not a bit of good thinking
about it," she said. "But oh, how lovely it would be!"

He laughed, looking at her with that gleam in his eyes that she had come
to know as exclusively her own. "Where there's a will, there's a way," he
said. "If you have the will, you can leave the way to me."

She drew a quick breath. Her heart was beating rather fast. "All right,"
she said. "I'll come."

"Is it a promise?" said Eustace.

She shook her head instantly. "No. I never make promises. They have a way
of spoiling things so."

"Exactly my own idea," he said. "Never turn a pleasure into a duty, or it
becomes a burden at once. Well, I must go and make myself pretty for this
evening's show. If I'm very bored, I shall come and sit out with you."

"Not to-night," said Isabel with quick decision. "Dinah is going to bed
very soon."

"Really?" He stood by Dinah's couch, looking down at her with his faint
supercilious smile. "Do you submit to that sort of tyranny?" he said.

She held up her hand to him. "It isn't tyranny. It is the very dearest
kindness in the world. Don't you know the difference?"

He held the little, confiding hand a moment or two, and she felt his
fingers close around it with a strength that seemed as if it encompassed
her very soul. "There are two ways of looking at everything," he said.
"But I shouldn't be too docile if I were you; not, that is, if you want
to get any fun out of life. Remember, life is short."

He let her go with the words, straightened himself to his full, splendid
height, and sauntered with regal arrogance to the door.

"I want you, Stumpy," he said, in passing. "There are one or two letters
for you to deal with. You can come to my room while I dress."

"In that case, I had better say good night too," said Scott, rising.

"Oh no," said Dinah, with her quick smile. "You can come in and say good
night to me afterwards--when I'm in bed. Can't he, Isabel?"

She had fallen into the habit of calling Isabel by her Christian name
from hearing Scott use it. It had begun almost in delirium, and now it
came so naturally that she never dreamed of reverting to the more formal
mode of address.

Scott smiled in his quiet fashion, and turned to join his brother. "I
will with pleasure," he said.

Eustace threw a mocking glance backwards. "It seems that philosophers
rush in where mere ordinary males fear to tread," he observed. "Stumpy,
allow me to congratulate you on you