“No, thank you,” said Dinah, and flushed suddenly and hotly at the thought of what she had once endured at her mother’s hands for daring to pencil the shadows under her eyes.  It had been no more than a girlish trick—­an experiment to pass an idle moment.  But it had been treated as an offence of immeasurable enormity, and she winced still at the memory of all that that moment’s vanity had entailed.

Rose looked at her appraisingly.  “No, perhaps you don’t need it after all, not anyhow when you blush like that.  You have quite a pretty blush, Dinah, and you are wise to make the most of it.  Are you ready, dear?  Then we will go down.”

She rustled forth with Dinah beside her, shedding a soft fragrance of some Indian scent as she moved that somehow filled Dinah with indignation, like a resentful butterfly in search of more wholesome delights.

Eustace was in the hall when they descended.  He came forward to meet his fiancee, and her heart throbbed fast and hard at the sight of him.  But his manner was so strictly casual and impersonal that her agitation speedily passed, and by the time they were seated side by side at dinner—­for the last time in their lives, as the Colonel jocosely remarked—­she could not feel that she had ever been anything nearer to him than a passing acquaintance.

She was shy and very quiet.  The hubbub of voices, the brilliance of it all, overwhelmed her.  If Scott had been on her other side, she would have been much happier, but he was far away making courteous conversation for the benefit of a deaf old lady whom no one else made the smallest effort to entertain.

Suddenly Sir Eustace disengaged himself from the general talk and turned to her.  “Dinah!” he said.

Her heart leapt again.  She glanced at him and caught the gleam of the hunter in those rapier-bright eyes of his.

He leaned slightly towards her, his smile like a shining cloak, hiding his soul.  “Daphne,” he said, and his voice came to her subtle, caressing, commanding, through the gay tumult all about them, “there is going to be dancing presently.  Did you hear?”

“Yes,” she whispered with lowered eyes.

“You will dance with only one to-night,” he said.  “That is understood, is it?”

“Yes,” she whispered again.

“Good!” he said.  And then imperiously, “Why don’t you drink some wine?”

She made a slight, startled movement.  “I never do, I don’t like it.”

“You need it,” he said, and made a curt sign to one of the servants.

Wine was poured into her glass, and she drank submissively.  The discipline of the past two weeks had made her wholly docile.  And the wine warmed and cheered her in a fashion that made her think that perhaps he was right and she had needed it.

When the dinner came to an end she was feeling far less scared and strange.  Guests were beginning to assemble for the dance, and as they passed out people whom she knew by sight but to whom she had never spoken came up and talked with her as though they were old friends.  Several men asked her to dance, but she steadily refused them all.  Her turn would come later.