o pour out to her that which was infinitely greater
than passion; she made a little sound that seemed to come straight from
her heart.

"Oh, I can't tell you!" she sobbed into his shoulder. "I can't think how
I ever made such a terrible mistake. But if only--oh, if only--you could
marry Rose instead! It would be so very much better for everybody."

"Marry Rose!" he said. "What on earth made you think of that at this
stage?"

"I always thought you would--in Switzerland," she explained rather
incoherently. "I--never really thought--I could cut her out."

"Is that what you did it for?" An odd note sounded in Sir Eustace's
voice, as though some irony of circumstance had forced his sense of
humour.

"Just at first," whispered Dinah. "Oh, don't be angry! Please don't be
angry! You--you weren't in earnest either just at first."

He considered the matter in silence for a few moments. Then
half-quizzically, "I don't see that that is any reason for throwing me
over now," he said. "If you don't love me to-day, you will to-morrow."

She shook her head.

"Quite sure?" he said.

"Quite," she answered faintly.

His hand was still upon her head, and it remained there. He held her
closely pressed to him.

For a space again he was silent, his dark face bent over her, his lips
actually touching her hair. Of what was passing in his mind she had no
notion, and she dared not lift her head to look. She dreaded each moment
a return of that tornado-like passion that had so often appalled her.
But it did not come. His arms held her indeed, but without violence, and
in his stillness there was no tension to denote its presence.

He spoke at length, almost whispering. "Dinah, who is the lucky fellow?
Tell me!"

She started away from him. She almost cried out in her dismay. But he
stopped her. He took her face between his hands with an insistence that
would not be denied. He looked closely, searchingly, into her eyes.

"Is it Scott?" he said.

She did not answer him. She stood as one paralysed, and up over face and
neck and all her trembling body, enwrapping her like a flame, there rose
a scorching, agonizing blush.

He held her there before him and watched it, and she saw that his eyes
were piercingly bright, with the brightness of burnished steel. She could
not turn her own away from them, though her whole soul shrank from that
stark scrutiny. In anguish of mind she faced him, helpless, unutterably
ashamed, while that burning