Arthur Dimmesdale, regarded by all the people as a saint, too good for earth, was earnestly exhorting her to declare the name of the child’s father, but she steadfastly refused, and was sent back to prison.  Prynne who had heard in Amsterdam rumors of his wife’s infidelity, both to discover her betrayer and to hide his own relation to his wife, had taken the name of Roger Chillingworth, and with eyes sharpened by jealousy and wounded pride, soon discovered that his wife’s lover was no other than Dimmesdale himself.  As a physician and under the guise of friendship he attached himself to the minister, and pursued his ghastly search for the secret cause that was eating away his life.  How it all ended is shown in that wonderful book where, as in a Greek drama, the fates of Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and the love-child, Little Pearl, are traced in lines of fire.—­Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.

DINANT’, a gentleman who once loved and still pretends to love Lamira. the wife of Champernel.—­Beaumont and Fletcher, The Little French Lawyer (1647).

DINARZA’DE (4 syl.), sister of Scheherazade, Sultana of Persia.  Dinarzade was instructed by her sister to wake her every morning an hour before daybreak, and say, “Sister, relate to me one of those delightful stories you know,” or “Finish before daybreak the story you began yesterday.”  The sultan got interested in these tales, and revoked the cruel determination he had made of strangling at daybreak the wife he had married the preceeding night. (See SCHEHERAZADE.)

DINAS EMRYS, or “Fort of Ambrose” (i.e. Merlin), on the Brith, a part of Snowdon.  When Vortigern built this fort, whatever was constructed during the day was swallowed up in the earth during the night.  Merlin (then called Ambrose or Embres-Guletic) discovered the cause to be “two serpents at the bottom of a pool below the foundation of the works.”  These serpents were incessantly struggling with each other; one was white, and the other red.  The white serpent at first prevaled, but ultimately the red one chased the other out of the pool.  The red serpent, he said, meant the Britons, and the white one the Saxons.  At first the Saxons (or white serpent) prevailed, but in the end “our people” the red serpent “shall chase the Saxon race beyond the sea.”—­Nennius, History of the Britons (842).

And from the top of Brith, so high and wondrous steep Where Dinas Emris stood, showed where the serpents fought The white that tore the red, for whence the prophet taught The Britons’ sad decay.

Drayton, Polyolbion, x, (1612).

DINE WITH DUKE HUMPHREY (To), to have no dinner to go to.  The Duke referred to was the son of Henry IV., murdered at St. Edmundsbury, and buried at St. Alban’s.  It was generally thought that he was buried in the nave of St. Paul’s Cathedral; but the monument supposed to be erected to the duke was in reality that of John Beauchamp.  Loungers, who were asked if they were not going home to dinner, and those who tarried in St. Paul’s after the general crowd had left, were supposed to be so busy looking for the duke’s monument that they disregarded the dinner hour.