let that shock you. He's such a bashful knight he'll never tell
you so. You'll have to do that part of it." He smiled with faint irony.
"But you may take my word for it, it is so. He has thought of nothing but
you and your happiness from the very beginning of things. And--unlike
someone else we know--he has had the decency always to put your happiness
first."

He paused. Dinah's eyes had flashed up to his, green, eager, intensely
alive, and behind those eyes her soul seemed to be straining like a thing
in leash. "Oh, I knew he had cared for someone," she breathed, "But it
couldn't--it couldn't have been me!"

"Yes," Sir Eustace said slowly. "You and none other. You wonder if it's
true--how I know. He's an awful ass, as I said before, one of the few
supreme fools who never think of themselves. I knew that he was caught
all right ages back in Switzerland, and--being a low hound of mean
instincts--I set to work to cut him out."

"Oh!" murmured Dinah. "That was just what I did with Rose de Vigne."

His mouth twisted a little. "It's a funny world, Dinah," he said. "Our
little game has cost us both something. I got too near the candle myself,
and the scorch was pretty sharp while it lasted. Well, to get back to my
story. Scott saw that I was beginning to give you indigestion, and--being
as I mentioned before several sorts of a fool--he tackled me upon the
subject and swore that if I didn't put an end to the game, he would put
you on your guard against me, tell you in fact the precise species of
rotter that I chanced to be. I was naturally annoyed by his interference.
Anyone would have been. I gave him the kicking he deserved. That was low
of me, wasn't it?" as she made a quick movement of shrinking. "You won't
forgive me for that, or for what came after. The very next day--to spite
the little beast--I proposed to you."

Dinah's eyes were fiercely bright. "I wish I'd known!" she said.

"I wish to heaven you had, my dear," Eustace spoke with a grim hint of
humour. "It would have saved us both a good deal of unnecessary trouble
and humiliation. However, Scott was too big a fool to tell you. There is
a martyrlike sort of cussedness about him that is several degrees worse
than any pride. So he let things be, still cheating himself into the
belief that the arrangement was for your happiness, till, as you are
aware, it turned out so manifestly otherwise that he found himself
obliged once more to come to the rescue of his lady l