Scott smiled at her in a way that set her mind wholly at rest.  “No, I think not,” he said.  “When shall he come?  This evening?”

Dinah slipped a confiding hand into his.  She felt that now Scott knew and was not scandalized, there was no further need for embarrassment.  “Oh, just any time,” she said.  “But hadn’t I better get up?  It would look better, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Scott.  “You had better ask the doctor.”

Dinah’s face flushed red.  “Need the doctor know?” she asked him shyly.  “I am—­so afraid of his saying I am well enough to go home.  And that—­that will end everything.”

“He shan’t say that,” Scott promised, still smiling in the fashion that so warmed her heart.  “I will drop him a hint.”

“Oh, you are good!” Dinah said very earnestly.  “I think you are the kindest man I have ever met.”

He laughed at that.  “My dear, it is easy to be kind to you,” he said.

“I’m sure I don’t know why,” she protested.  “I’m getting very spoilt and selfish.”

He patted her hand gently and laid it down.  “You are—­just you,” he said, and rising with the words rather abruptly he left her.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE LIGHTS OF A CITY

“May I come in?” said Sir Eustace.

He stood in the doorway, a gigantic figure to Dinah’s unaccustomed eyes, and looked in upon her with a careless smile on his handsome face.

“Oh, please do!” she said.

She was lying on a couch under a purple rug belonging to Isabel.  Very fragile and weak she looked, but her face was flushed and eager, her eyes alight with welcome.  She thought he had never looked so splendid, so godlike, as at that moment.  She wanted to hold out both her arms to him and be borne upward to Olympus in his embrace.

He came forward with his easy carriage and stood beside her.  His smile was one of kindly indulgence.  He looked down at her as he might have looked upon an infant.

An uneasy sense of her own insignificance went through Dinah.  She could not remember that he had ever regarded her thus before.  A faint, faint throb of resentment also pulsed through her.  His attitude was so suggestive of the mere casual acquaintance.  Surely—­surely he had not forgotten!

“Won’t you sit down?” she asked in a small voice that was quite unconsciously formal.

He seated himself in the chair that had been placed at her side.  “So they have left you behind to be mended, have they?” he said.  “I hope it is a satisfactory process, is it?”

She had meant to give him her hand, but as he did not seem to expect it she refrained from doing so.  A great longing to cover her face and burst into tears took possession of her; she resisted it frantically, with all her strength.

“Oh yes, I am getting better, thank you,” she said, in a voice that quivered in spite of her.  “I am afraid I have been a great nuisance to everybody.  I am sure the de Vignes thought so; and—­and—­I expect you do too.”