Mrs. Bathurst made a sharp gesture as if something had pierced her. She shook the shoulder she grasped. "Love!" she said. "Oh, don't talk to me of love! Do you imagine--have you ever imagined--that I married that fox-hunting b.o.o.by--for love?"

A great and terrible bitterness that was like the hunger of a famished animal looked out of her eyes. Dinah gazed at her aghast. What new and horrible revelation was this? She felt suddenly sick and giddy.

Her mother shook her again roughly, savagely. "None of that!" she said.

"Don't think I'll put up with it, my fine lady, for I won't! What has love to do with such a chance as this? Tell me that, you little fool! Do you suppose that either you or I have ever been in a position to marry--for love?"

Her face was darkly pa.s.sionate. Dinah felt as if she were in the clutches of a tigress. "What--what do you mean?" she faltered through her quivering lips.

"What do I mean?" Mrs. Bathurst broke into a sudden brutal laugh. "Ha!

What do I mean?" she said. "I'll tell you, shall I? Yes, I'll tell you!

I'll show you the shame that I've covered all these years. I mean that I married because of you--for no other reason. I married because I'd been betrayed--and left. Now do you understand why it isn't for you to pick and choose--you who have been the plague-spot of my life, the thorn in my side ever since you first stirred there--a perpetual reminder of what I would have given my very soul to forget? Do you understand, I say? Do you understand? Or must I put it plainer still? You--the child of my shame--to dare to set yourself up against me!"

She ended upon what was almost a note of loathing, and Dinah shuddered from head to foot. It was to her as if she had been rolled in pitch. She felt overwhelmed with the cruel degradation of it, the unspeakable shame.

Mrs. Bathurst watched her anguished distress with a species of bitter satisfaction. "That'll take the fight out of you, my girl," she said. "Or if it doesn't, I've another sort of remedy yet to try. Now, you start on that letter, do you hear? It'll be a bit shaky, but none the worse for that. Write and tell him you've changed your mind! Beg him humble-like to take you back!"

But Dinah only bowed her head upon her hands and sat crushed.

Mrs. Bathurst gave her a few seconds to recover her balance. Then again mercilessly she shook her by the shoulder.

"Come, Dinah! I'm not going to be defied. Are you going to write that letter at once? Or must I take stronger measures?"

And then a species of wild courage entered into Dinah. She turned at last at bay. "I will not write it! I would sooner die! If--if this thing is true, it would be far easier to die! I couldn't marry any man now who had any pride of birth."

She was terribly white, but she faced her tormentor unflinching, her eyes like stars. And it came to Mrs. Bathurst with unpleasant force that she had taken a false step which it was impossible to retrace. It was then that the evil spirit that had been goading her entered in and took full possession.

She gripped Dinah's shoulder till she winced with pain. "Mother, you--you are hurting me!"

"Yes, and I will hurt you," she made answer. "I'll hurt you as I've never hurt you yet if you dare to disobey me! I'll crush you to the earth before I will endure that from you. Now! For the last time! Will you write that letter? Think well before you refuse again!"

She towered over Dinah with awful determination, wrought up to a pitch of fury by her resistance that almost bordered upon insanity.

Dinah's boldness waned swiftly before the iron force that countered it.

But her resolution remained unshaken, a resolution from which no power on earth could move her.

"I can't do it--possibly," she said.

"You mean you won't?" said Mrs. Bathurst.

Dinah nodded, and gripped the table hard to endure what should follow.

"You--mean--you won't?" Mrs. Bathurst said again very slowly.

"I will not." The white lips spoke the words, and closed upon them. Dinah sat rigid with apprehension.

Mrs. Bathurst took her hand from her shoulder and turned from her. The candle that had been burning all the evening was low in its socket. She lifted it out and went to the fireplace. There were some shavings in the grate. She pushed the lighted candle end in among them; then, as the fire roared up the chimney, she turned.

An open trunk was close to her with the dainty pale green dress that Dinah had worn the previous evening lying on the top. She took it up, and bundled the soft folds together. Then violently she flung it on to the flames.

Dinah gave a cry of dismay, and started to her feet. "Mother! What are you doing? Mother! Are you mad?"

Mrs. Bathurst looked at her with eyes of blazing vindictiveness. "If you are not going to be married, you won't need a trousseau," she said grimly. "These things are quite unfit for a girl in your station. For Lady Studley they would of course have been suitable, but not for such as you."

She turned back to the open trunk with the words, and began to sweep together every article of clothing it contained. Dinah watched her in horror-stricken silence. She remembered with odd irrelevance how once in her childhood for some petty offence her mother had burnt a favourite doll, and then had whipped her soundly for crying over her loss.

She did not cry now. Her tears seemed frozen. She did not feel as if she could ever cry again. The cold that enwrapped her was beginning to reach her heart. She thought she was getting past all feeling.

So in mute despair she watched the sacrifice of all that Isabel's loving care had provided. So much thought had been spent upon the delicate finery. They had discussed and settled each dainty garment together. She had revelled in the thought of all the good things which she was to wear--she who had never worn anything that was beautiful before. And now--and now--they shrivelled in the roaring flame and dropped into grey ash in the fender.

It was over at last. Only the wedding-dress remained. But as Mrs.

Bathurst laid merciless hands upon this also, Dinah uttered a bitter cry.

"Oh, not that! Not that!"

Her mother paused. "Will you wear it to-morrow if Sir Eustace will have you?" she demanded.

"No! Oh no!" Dinah tottered back against her bed and covered her eyes.

She could not watch the destruction of that fairy thing. But it went so quickly, so quickly. When she looked up again, it had crumbled away like the rest, and the shimmering veil with it. Nothing, nothing was left of all the splendour that had been hers.

She sank down on the foot of the bed. Surely her mother would be satisfied now! Surely her l.u.s.t for vengeance could devise no further punishment!

She was nearing the end of her strength, and she was beginning to know it. The room swam before her dizzy sight. Her mother's figure loomed gigantic, scarcely human.

She saw her poke down the last of the cinders and turn to the door. There was a pungent smell of smoke in the room. She wondered if she would ever be able to cross that swaying, seething floor to open the window. She closed her eyes and listened with straining ears for the closing of the door.

It came, and following it, a sharp click as of the turning of a key. She looked up at the sound, and saw her mother come back to her. She was carrying something in one hand, something that dangled and east a snake-like shadow.

She came to the cowering girl and caught her by the arm. "Now get up!"

she ordered brutally. "And take the rest of your punishment!"

Truly Dinah drank the cup of bitterness to the dregs that night. Mentally she had suffered till she had almost ceased to feel. But physically her powers of endurance had not been so sorely tried. But her nerves were strung to a pitch when even a sudden movement made her tingle, and upon this highly-tempered sensitiveness the punishment now inflicted upon her was acute agony. It broke her even more completely than it had broken her in childhood. Before many seconds had pa.s.sed the last shred of her self-control was gone.

Guy Bathurst, lying comfortably in bed, was aroused from his first slumber by a succession of sharp sounds like the lashing of a loosened creeper against the window, but each sound was followed by an anguished cry that sank and rose again like the wailing of a hurt child.

He turned his head and listened. "By Jove! That's too bad of Lydia," he said. "I suppose she won't be satisfied till she's had her turn, but I shall have to interfere if it goes on."

It did not go on for long; quite suddenly the cries ceased. The other sounds continued for a few seconds more, then ceased also, and he turned upon his pillow with a sigh of relief.

A minute later he was roused again by the somewhat abrupt entrance of his wife. She did not speak to him, but stood by the door and rummaged in the pockets of his shooting-coat that hung there.

Bathurst endured in silence for a few moments; then, "Oh, what on earth are you looking for?" he said with sleepy irritation. "I wish you'd go."

"I want your brandy flask," she said, and her words came clipped and sharp. "Where is it?"

"On the dressing-table," he said. "What have you been doing to the child?"

"I've given her as much as she can stand," his wife retorted grimly. "But you leave her to me! I'll manage her."