"I wonder," said Isabel slowly, "if he will ever meet anyone who will love him best of all."

Dinah was suddenly conscious of a rush of blood to her face. She knew not wherefore, but she felt it beat in her temples and sing in her ears. "Oh, surely--surely!" she stammered in confusion.

Isabel looked beyond her. "You know, Dinah," she said, her voice very low, "Scott is a man with an almost infinite greatness of soul. I don't know if you realize it. I have thought sometimes that you did. But there are very few--very few--who do."

"I know he is great," whispered Dinah. "I told him so almost--almost the first time I saw him."

Isabel's smile was very tender. She stooped and gathered Dinah to her bosom. "Oh, my dear," she murmured, "never prefer the tinsel to the true gold! He is far, far the greatest man I know. And you--you will never meet a greater."

Dinah clung to her in quick responsiveness. Her strange agitation was subsiding, but she could feel the blood yet pulsing in her veins. "I know it," she whispered. "I am sure of it. He is very much to you, dear, isn't he?"

"For years he has been my all," Isabel said. "Listen a moment! I will tell you something. In the first dreadful days of my illness, I was crazy with trouble, and--and they bound me to keep me from violence. I have never forgotten it. I never shall. Then--he came. He was very young at that time, only twenty-three. He had his life before him, and mine--mine was practically over. Yet he gave up everything--everything for my sake.

He took command; he banished all the horrible people who had taken possession of me. He gave me freedom, and he set himself to safe-guard me. He brought me home. He was with me night and day, or if not actually with me, within call. He and Biddy between them brought me back. They watched me, nursed me, cared for me. Whenever my trouble was greater than I could bear, he was always there to help me. He never left me; and gradually he became so necessary to me that I couldn't contemplate life without him. I have been terribly selfish." A low sob checked her utterance for a moment, and Dinah's young arms tightened. "I let my grief take hold of me to the exclusion of everything else. I didn't see--I didn't realize--the sacrifice he was making. For years I took it all as a right, living in my fog of misery and blind to all beside. But now--now at last--thanks to you, little one, whom I nearly killed--my eyes are open once more. The fog has rolled away. No, I can never be happy. I am of those who wait. But I will never again, G.o.d helping me, deprive others of happiness. Scott shall live his own life now. His devotion to me must come to an end. My greatest wish in life now is that he may meet a woman worthy of him, who will love him as he deserves to be loved, before I climb the peaks of Paradise and find my beloved in the dawning." Isabel's voice sank. She pressed Dinah close against her heart. "It will not be long," she whispered. "I have had a message that there is no mistaking, I know it will not be long. But oh, darling, I do want to see him happy first."

Dinah was crying softly. She could find no words to utter.

So for awhile they clung together, the woman who had suffered and come at last through bitter tribulation into peace, and the child whose feet yet halted on the threshold of the enchanted country that the other had long since traversed and left behind.

Nothing further pa.s.sed between them. Isabel had said her say, and for some reason Dinah was powerless to speak. She could think of no words to utter, and deep in her heart she was half afraid to break the silence.

That sudden agitation of hers had left her oddly confused and embarra.s.sed. She shrank from pursuing the matter further.

Yet for a long time that night she lay awake pondering, wondering.

Certainly Scott was different from all other men, totally, undeniably different. He seemed to dwell on a different plane. She could not grasp what it was about him that set him thus apart. But what Isabel had said showed her very clearly that the spirit that dwelt behind that unimposing exterior was a force that counted, and could hold its own against odds.

She slept at last with the thought of him still present in her mind. And in her dreams the vision of Greatheart in his shining armour came to her again, filling her with a happiness which even sleeping she did not dare to a.n.a.lyse, scarcely to contemplate.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE CALL OF APOLLO

Dinah's strength came back to her in leaps and bounds, and three weeks after the de Vignes's departure she was almost herself again. The season was drawing to a close. The holidays were over, and English people were turning homeward. Very reluctantly Isabel had to admit that her charge was well enough for the journey back. Mrs. Bathurst wrote in an insistent strain, urging that the time had come for her to return, and no further excuse could be invented for keeping her longer.

They decided to return themselves and take Dinah to her home, Isabel having determined to make the acquaintance of the redoubtable Mrs.

Bathurst, and persuade her to spare her darling to them again in the summer. The coming parting was hard to face, so hard that Dinah could not bear to speak of it. She shed a good many tears in private, as Isabel was well aware; but she never willingly made any reference to the ordeal she so dreaded.

The only time she voluntarily broached the subject was when she entreated to be allowed to go down to the last dance that was to be held in the hotel. It chanced that this was fixed for the night before their own departure, and Isabel demurred somewhat; for though Dinah had shaken off most of her invalid habits, she was still far from robust.

"You will be so tired in the morning, darling," she protested gently, while Dinah knelt beside her, earnestly pleading. "You will get that tiresome side-ache, and you won't be fit to travel."

"I shall--I shall," Dinah a.s.sured her. "Oh, please, dear, just this once--just this once--let me have this one more fling! I shall never have another chance. I'm sure I never shall."

Isabel's hand stroked the soft dark hair caressingly. She saw that Dinah was very near to tears. "I don't believe I ought to say Yes, dear child,"

she said. "You know I hate to deny you anything. But if it were to do you harm, I should never forgive myself."

"It couldn't! It shan't!" declared Dinah, almost incoherent in her vehemence. "It isn't as if I wanted to dance every dance. I'd come and sit out with you in between. And if I got tired, you could take me away.

I would go directly if you said so. Really I would."

She was hard to resist, kneeling there with her arms about Isabel and her bright eyes lifted. Isabel took the sweet face between her hands and kissed it.

"Let me ask Scott what he thinks!" she said. "I want to give in to you, Dinah darling, but it's against my judgment. If it is against his judgment too, will you be content to give it up?"

"Oh, of course," said Dinah instantly. She was confident that Scott--that kind and gentle friend of hers--would deny her nothing. It seemed almost superfluous to ask him.

The words had scarcely left her lips when his quiet knock came at the sitting-room door, and he entered.

She looked round at him with a smile of quick welcome. "I'll give it up in a minute if he says so," she said.

Isabel turned in her chair. "Come here, Stumpy!" she said. "We want your advice. We are talking about the dance to-night. Dinah has set her heart on going. Would it--do you think it would--do her any harm?"

Scott came up to them in his halting way. He looked at Dinah pressed close to his sister's side, and his smile was very kindly as he said, "Poor little Cinderella! It's hard lines; but, you know, the doctor's last words to you were a warning against over-exerting yourself."

"But I shouldn't," she a.s.sured him eagerly. "Really, truly, I shouldn't!

I walked all the way to the village with you yesterday, and wasn't a bit tired--or hardly a bit--when I got back."

"You looked jaded to death," he said.

"I am afraid it is thumbs down," said Isabel, a touch of regret in her voice.

"Oh no,--no!" entreated Dinah. "Mr. Studley, please--please say I may go!

I promise I won't dance too much. I promise I'll stop directly I'm tired."

"My dear child," Scott said, "it would be sheer madness for you to attempt to dance at all. Isabel," he turned to his sister with most unusual sharpness, "how can you tantalize her in this way? Say No at once! You know perfectly well she isn't fit for it."

Isabel made no attempt to argue the point. "You hear, Dinah?" she said.

A quick throb of anger went through Dinah. She disengaged herself quickly, and stood up. "Mr. Studley," she said in a voice that quivered, "it's not right--it's not fair! How can you know what is good for me? And even if you did, what--what right--" She broke off, trembling and holding to Isabel's chair to steady herself.

Scott's eyes, very level, very kind, were looking straight at her in a fashion that checked the hot words on her lips. "My child, no right whatever," he said. "I have no more power to control your actions than the man in the moon. But if you want my approval to your scheme, I can't give it you. I don't approve, and because I don't, I tell Isabel that she ought to refuse to carry it through. I have no right to control her either, but I think my opinion means something to her. I hope it does at least."

He looked at Isabel, but she said nothing. Only she put her arm about Dinah as she stood.

There followed a few moments of very difficult silence; then abruptly the mutiny went out of Dinah's face and att.i.tude.

"I'm horrid," she said, in a voice half-choked. "Forgive me! You--you shouldn't spoil me so."

"Oh, don't, please!" said Scott. "I am infernally sorry. I know what it means to you."

He took out his cigarette-case and turned away with a touch of embarra.s.sment. She saw that for some reason he was moved.

Impulsively she left Isabel and came to him. "Don't think any more about it!" she said. "I'll go to bed and be good."

"You always are," said Scott, faintly smiling.

"No, no, I'm not! What a fib! You know I'm not. But I'm going to be good this time--so that you shall have something nice to remember me by."