To all of which Dinah listened in set silence, telling herself with desperate insistence that it would not be for long.  Sir Eustace did not mean to be kept waiting, and he would deliver her finally and for all time.

She did not know exactly why her mother was angry.  She supposed she resented the idea of losing her slave.  There seemed no other possible reason, for love for her she had none.  Dinah knew but too cruelly well that she had been naught but an unwelcome burden from the very earliest days of her existence.  Till she met Isabel, she had never known what real mother-love could be.

She wondered if her fiance would notice the red mark on her cheek when she carried in the teapot; but he was holding a careless conversation with her father, and only gave her a glance and a smile.

During the meal that followed he scarcely addressed her or so much as looked her way.  He treated her mother with a freezing aloofness that made her tremble inwardly.  She wondered how he dared.

When at length he rose to go, however, his attention returned to Dinah.  He laid a dominating hand upon her shoulder.  “Are you coming to see me off?”

She glanced at her mother in involuntary appeal, but failed to catch her eye.  Silently she turned to the door.

He took leave of her parents with the indifference of one accustomed to popularity.  “I shall be round in the morning,” he said to her father.  “About twelve?  That’ll suit me very well; unless I wait till the afternoon and bring my sister.  I know she hopes to come over if she is well enough.  That is, of course, if you don’t object to an informal call.”

He spoke as if in his opinion the very fact of its informality conferred a favour, and again Dinah trembled lest her mother should break forth into open rudeness.

But to her amazement Mrs. Bathurst seemed somewhat overawed by the princely stranger.  She even smiled in a grim way as she said, “I will be at home to her.”

Sir Eustace made her a ceremonious bow and went out sweeping Dinah along with him.  He closed the door with a decision there was no mistaking, and the next moment he had her in his arms.

“You poor little frightened mouse!” he said.  “No wonder—­no wonder you never knew before what life, real life, could be!”

She clung to him with all her strength, burying her face in the fur collar of his coat.  “Oh, do marry me, quick—­quick—­quick!” she besought him, in a muffled whisper.  “And take me away!”

He gathered her close in his arms, so close that she trembled again.  Her nerves were all on edge that night.

“If they won’t let me have you in a month from now,” he said, in a voice that quivered slightly, “I swear I’ll run away with you.”

There was no echo of humour in his words though she tried to laugh at them, and ever he pressed her closer and closer to his heart, till panting she had to lift her face.  And then he kissed her in his passionate compelling way, holding her shy lips with his own till he actually forced them to respond.  She felt as if his love burned her, but, even so, she dared not shrink from it.  There was so much at stake.  Her mother’s lack of love was infinitely harder to endure.