“What’s the joke?” demanded Sir Eustace.

She blushed very deeply, realizing that she had allowed her thoughts to run away with her.

“There isn’t a joke really,” she told him.  “It wasn’t important anyhow.  I was only thinking how—­how surprised the de Vignes would be.”

He frowned momentarily; then he laughed.  “Proud of your conquest, eh?” he asked.

She blushed still more deeply.  “It’s easy to laugh now, but I shall never dare to face them,” she murmured.

He took her hand as they walked, linking his fingers in hers with a careless air of possession.  “When you are Lady Studley,” he said, “I shall not allow you to knock under to anyone—­except your husband.”

She gave a faint laugh.  “I—­shall have to learn to swagger,” she said.  “But I’m afraid I shall never do it as well as you do.”

“What?  Swagger?” He frowned again.  “How dare you accuse me of that?”

“Oh, I didn’t!  I don’t!” Hastily she sought to avert his displeasure.  “No, no!  I only meant that you were born to it.  I’m not.  I—­I’m very ordinary; not nearly good enough for you.”

His frown melted again.  “You are—­Daphne,” he said.  “Ah!  Here is Scott, coming to look for us!  Who is going to break the news to him?”

She made a small, ineffectual attempt to release her hand.  Then, under her breath, “He—­saw you kiss me last night,” she whispered.  “Don’t you think he may have guessed already?”

A very cynical look came into Eustace’s face.  “I wonder,” he said briefly.

They went on side by side down the white, shining track; but Dinah was no longer treading on air.  She could see the slight, insignificant figure that awaited them close to the hotel-entrance, and her heart felt oddly weighted within her.  It was not the memory of the night before that oppressed her.  That episode had faded almost into nothingness.  But the ordeal of facing him, of telling him of the wonderful thing that had just happened to her, seemed suddenly more than she could bear.  Something within her seemed to cry out against it.  She had a curious feeling of looking out at him across great billows of seething uncertainty that rolled ever higher and higher between them, threatening to separate them for all time.

Yet when she neared him, the tumult of feeling sank again as the quietness of his presence reached her.  Out of the tempest she found herself drifting into a safe harbour of still waters.

He moved to meet them, and she heard his voice greet her as he raised his cap.  “So you have been for your farewell stroll!”

She did not answer in words, only she freed her hand from Eustace with a resolute little tug and gave it to him.

Eustace spoke, a species of half-veiled insolence in his tone.  “Like the psalmist she went forth weeping and has returned bearing her sheaf with her—­in the form of a fairly substantial fiance.”