She pressed the question as he did not seem inclined to answer it, and saw again the frown that had darkened his handsome face upon arrival.

“Do tell me!” she begged.  “Isn’t she so well?”

And at last with the curtness of speech which always denoted displeasure with him, he made reply.

“No, she has gone back a good deal since she got home.  She lies on a sofa and broods all day long.  I am looking to you to wake her up.  For heaven’s sake be as lively as you can!”

“Oh, poor Isabel!” Quick concern was in Dinah’s voice.  “What is it, do you think?  Doesn’t the place suit her?”

“Heaven knows,” he answered gloomily, “I have a house down at Heath-on-Sea where we keep the yacht, but I doubt if it would do her much good to go there this time of the year.  She and Scott might try it later—­after the wedding.”

“Couldn’t we all go there?” suggested Dinah ingenuously.

He gave her a keen glance.  “For the honeymoon?  No I don’t think so,” he said.

“Only for the first part of it,” said Dinah coaxingly; “till Isabel felt better.”

He uttered a brief laugh.  “No, thanks, Daphne.  We’re going to be alone—­quite alone, for the first part of our honeymoon.  I am going to take you in this car to the most out-of-the-way corner in England, where—­even, if you run away—­there’ll be nowhere to run to.  And there you’ll stay till—­” he paused a moment—­“you realize that you are all mine for ever and ever, till in fact, you’ve shed all your baby nonsense and become a wise little married woman.”

Dinah gave a sudden sharp shiver, and pulled her coat closer about her.

He glanced at her again.  “You’ll like it better than being a maid-of-all-work,” he said, with his swift, transforming smile.

She smiled back at him with ready responsiveness.  “Oh, I shall!  I’m sure I shall.  I’ve always wanted to be married—­always.  Only—­it’ll seem a little funny, just at first.  You won’t get impatient with me, will you, if—­if sometimes I forget how to behave?”

He laughed and abruptly slackened speed.  They were running down a narrow lane bordered with bare trees through which the spring sunshine filtered down.  On a brown upland to one side of them a plough was being driven.  On the other the ground sloped away to deep meadows where wound a willow-banked river.

The car stopped.  “How pretty it is!” said Dinah.

And then very suddenly she found that it was not for the sake of the view that he had brought her to a standstill in that secluded place.  For he caught her to him with the hot ardour she had learned to dread and kissed with passion the burning face she sought to hide.

She struggled for a few seconds like a captured bird, but in the end she yielded palpitating, as she had yielded so often before, mutely bearing that which her whole soul clamoured inarticulately to escape.  When he let her go, her cheeks were on fire.  He was laughing, but she was on the verge of tears.