mbered, nor could one in kindness wish
it otherwise. Still, I mustn't sadden you, dear. You have got to look
your very best to-night, or Sir Eustace will be disappointed. There are
quite a lot of pretty girls coming, and you know what he is." Rose
uttered a little self-conscious laugh. "Put on a tinge of colour, dear!"
she said, as Dinah stood before the mirror in her room. "You look such a
little brown thing; just a faint glow on your cheeks would be such an
improvement."

"No, thank you," said Dinah, and flushed suddenly and hotly at the
thought of what she had once endured at her mother's hands for daring to
pencil the shadows under her eyes. It had been no more than a girlish
trick--an experiment to pass an idle moment. But it had been treated as
an offence of immeasurable enormity, and she winced still at the memory
of all that that moment's vanity had entailed.

Rose looked at her appraisingly. "No, perhaps you don't need it after
all, not anyhow when you blush like that. You have quite a pretty blush,
Dinah, and you are wise to make the most of it. Are you ready, dear? Then
we will go down."

She rustled forth with Dinah beside her, shedding a soft fragrance of
some Indian scent as she moved that somehow filled Dinah with
indignation, like a resentful butterfly in search of more wholesome
delights.

Eustace was in the hall when they descended. He came forward to meet his
_fiancee_, and her heart throbbed fast and hard at the sight of him. But
his manner was so strictly casual and impersonal that her agitation
speedily passed, and by the time they were seated side by side at
dinner--for the last time in their lives, as the Colonel jocosely
remarked--she could not feel that she had ever been anything nearer to
him than a passing acquaintance.

She was shy and very quiet. The hubbub of voices, the brilliance of it
all, overwhelmed her. If Scott had been on her other side, she would have
been much happier, but he was far away making courteous conversation for
the benefit of a deaf old lady whom no one else made the smallest effort
to entertain.

Suddenly Sir Eustace disengaged himself from the general talk and turned
to her. "Dinah!" he said.

Her heart leapt again. She glanced at him and caught the gleam of the
hunter in those rapier-bright eyes of his.

He leaned slightly towards her, his smile like a shining cloak, hiding
his soul. "Daphne," he said, and his voice came to her subtle, caressing,
commandi