olute
finality.

Isabel looked at him for a moment; then: "Yes, but the poor little thing
would never dare," she said. "Besides--besides--there is the glamour of
it all."

"Yes, there is the glamour." Scott spoke with a kind of grim compassion.
"The glamour may carry her through. If so, then--possibly--it may soften
life for her afterwards. It may even turn into romance. Who knows?
But--in any case--there will probably be--compensations."

"Ah!" Isabel said. A wonderful light shone for a moment in her eyes and
died; she turned her face aside. "Compensations don't come to everyone,
Stumpy," she said. "What if the glamour fades and they don't come to take
its place?"

Scott was standing before the fire, his eyes fixed upon its red depths.
His shoulders were still bent, as though they bore a burden well-nigh
overwhelming. An odd little spasm went over his face at her words.

"Then--God help my Dinah!" he said almost under his breath.

In the silence that followed the words, Isabel rose impulsively, came to
him, and slipped her hand through his arm.

She neither looked at him nor spoke, and in silence the matter passed.

CHAPTER X

THE HOURS OF DARKNESS

Dinah could not sleep that night. For the first time in all her healthy
young life she lay awake with grim care for a bed-fellow. When in trouble
she had always wept herself to sleep before, but to-night she did not
weep. She lay wide-eyed, feeling hot and cold by turns as the memory of
her lover's devouring passion and Biddy's sinister words alternated in
her brain. What was the warning that Biddy had meant to convey? And
how--oh, how--would she ever face the morrow and its fierce, prolonged
courtship, from the bare thought of which every fibre of her being shrank
in shamed dismay?

"There won't be any of me left by night," she told herself, as she sought
to cool her burning face against the pillow. "Oh, I wish he didn't love
me quite so terribly."

It was no good attempting to bridle wish or fears. They were far too
insistent. She was immured in the very dungeons of Doubting Castle, and
no star shone in her darkness.

Towards morning her restlessness became unendurable. She arose and
tremblingly paced the room, sick with a nameless apprehension that seemed
to deprive her alike of the strength to walk or to be still.

Her whole body was in a fever as though it had been scourged with thongs;
in fact, she still seemed to feel the scourge, goading he