“He certainly would not.”  Scott rose with a restless movement that said more than words.  “He is on fire for her.  Can’t you see it?  There is nothing to be done unless she herself wishes to be released.  And I don’t think that is very likely to happen.”

“He would never give her up,” Isabel said with conviction.

“If she desired it, he would,” Scott’s reply held an even more absolute finality.

Isabel looked at him for a moment; then:  “Yes, but the poor little thing would never dare,” she said.  “Besides—­besides—­there is the glamour of it all.”

“Yes, there is the glamour.”  Scott spoke with a kind of grim compassion.  “The glamour may carry her through.  If so, then—­possibly—­it may soften life for her afterwards.  It may even turn into romance.  Who knows?  But—­in any case—­there will probably be—­compensations.”

“Ah!” Isabel said.  A wonderful light shone for a moment in her eyes and died; she turned her face aside.  “Compensations don’t come to everyone, Stumpy,” she said.  “What if the glamour fades and they don’t come to take its place?”

Scott was standing before the fire, his eyes fixed upon its red depths.  His shoulders were still bent, as though they bore a burden well-nigh overwhelming.  An odd little spasm went over his face at her words.

“Then—­God help my Dinah!” he said almost under his breath.

In the silence that followed the words, Isabel rose impulsively, came to him, and slipped her hand through his arm.

She neither looked at him nor spoke, and in silence the matter passed.

CHAPTER X

THE HOURS OF DARKNESS

Dinah could not sleep that night.  For the first time in all her healthy young life she lay awake with grim care for a bed-fellow.  When in trouble she had always wept herself to sleep before, but to-night she did not weep.  She lay wide-eyed, feeling hot and cold by turns as the memory of her lover’s devouring passion and Biddy’s sinister words alternated in her brain.  What was the warning that Biddy had meant to convey?  And how—­oh, how—­would she ever face the morrow and its fierce, prolonged courtship, from the bare thought of which every fibre of her being shrank in shamed dismay?

“There won’t be any of me left by night,” she told herself, as she sought to cool her burning face against the pillow.  “Oh, I wish he didn’t love me quite so terribly.”

It was no good attempting to bridle wish or fears.  They were far too insistent.  She was immured in the very dungeons of Doubting Castle, and no star shone in her darkness.

Towards morning her restlessness became unendurable.  She arose and tremblingly paced the room, sick with a nameless apprehension that seemed to deprive her alike of the strength to walk or to be still.

Her whole body was in a fever as though it had been scourged with thongs; in fact, she still seemed to feel the scourge, goading her on.