Quick anxiety was in the words.  Dinah flushed with a sense of guilt.

“Of course I am happy,” she made answer.  “What more could I have to wish for?  But, Isabel, you—­you!”

“Ah, never mind me!” Isabel said.  She rose with the movement of one who would shield another from harm.  “You ought to be in bed, sweetheart.  Shall I come and tuck you up?”

“Come and finish the night with me!” whispered Dinah.  “We shall both be happy then.”

She scarcely expected that Isabel would accede to her desire, but it seemed that Isabel could refuse her nothing.  She turned, holding Dinah closely to her.

“My good angel!” she murmured tenderly.  “What should I do without you?  It is always you who come to lift me out of my inferno.”

She left the letters forgotten on the window-sill.  By the simple outpouring of her love, Dinah had drawn her out of her place of torment; and she led her now, leaning heavily upon her, through the passage to her own room.

Biddy crept after them like a wise old cat alert for danger.  “She’ll sleep now, Miss Dinah darlint,” she murmured.  “Ye won’t be anxious at all, at all?  It’s meself that’ll be within call.”

“No, no!  Go to your own room and sleep, Biddy!” Isabel said.  “We are both going to do the same.”

She sank into the great double bed that Dinah had found almost alarmingly capacious, with a sigh of exhaustion, and Dinah slipped in beside her.  They clasped each other, each with a separate sense of comfort.

Biddy tucked up first one side, then the other, with a whispered blessing for each.

“Ah, the poor lambs!” she murmured, as she went away.

But Isabel’s voice had reassured her; she did not linger even outside the door.

Mumbling still below her breath her inarticulate benisons, Biddy passed through her mistress’s room into her own.  She was very tired, for she had been watching without intermission for nearly five hours.  She almost dropped on to her bed and lay as she fell, deeply sleeping.

The letters on the window-sill were forgotten for the rest of that night.

CHAPTER XI

THE NET

When Dinah met her lover in the morning she found him in a surprisingly indulgent mood.  The day was showery, and he announced his intention of accompanying them in the car up to town.

“An excellent opportunity for selecting the wedding-ring,” he told her lightly.  “You will like that better than a picnic.”

And Dinah in her relief admitted that this was the case.

Up to the last moment she hoped that Scott would accompany them also, but when she came down dressed for the expedition she found that he had gone to the library to write letters.  She pursued him thither, but he would not be persuaded to leave his work.

“Besides, I should only be in the way,” he said.  And when she vehemently negatived this, he smiled and fell back upon the plea that he was busy.