Dinah choked down some scalding tears.  She longed to escape from the holding of his arm, and yet her torn spirit felt the comfort of it.  She stood silent, shaken, unnerved, piteously conscious of her utter weakness—­the weakness wrought by that iron discipline that had never suffered her to have any will of her own.

He put up a hand and pressed her drooping head against his shoulder.  “There’s nothing very dreadful in being married, dear,” he told her.  “I’m not such a devouring monster as I may seem.  Why, I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head.  They are all precious to me.”

She quivered at his use of the word that Biddy had employed with such venom only a few minutes before; but still she said nothing.  What could she say?  Against this new weapon of his she was more helpless than ever.  She hid her face against him and strove for self-control.

He kissed her temple and the clustering hair above it.  “There now!  You are not going to be a silly little scared fawn any more.  Come along and dance it off!”

His arm encircled her shoulders; he began to lead her to the stairs.

And Dinah went, slave-like in her submission, but hating herself the more for every step she took.

They went to the ballroom, and presently they danced.  But the old subtle charm was absent.  Her feet moved to the rhythm of the music, her body swayed and pulsed to the behest of his; but her spirit stood apart, bruised and downcast and very much alone.  Her gilded palace had fallen all about her in ruins.  The deliverance to which she had looked forward so eagerly was but another bondage that would prove more cruel and more enslaving than the first.  She longed with all her quivering heart to run away and hide.

He was very kind to her, more considerate than she had ever known him.  Perhaps he missed the fairy abandonment which had so delighted him in her dancing of old; but he found no fault; and when the dance was over he did not lead her away to some private corner as she had dreaded, but took her instead to her father and stood with him for some time in talk.

She saw Scott in the distance, but he did not approach her while Eustace was with them, and when her fiance turned away at length he had disappeared.

They were left comparatively alone, and Dinah slipped an urgent hand into her father’s.  “I want to go home, Daddy.  I’m so tired.”

He looked at her in surprise, but she managed to muster a smile in reply, and he was not observant enough to note the distress that lay behind it.

“Had enough of it, eh?” he questioned.  “Well, I think you’re wise.  You’ll be busy to-morrow.  By all means, let’s go!”

It was not till the very last moment that she saw Scott again.  He came forward just as she was passing through the hall to the front door.

He took the hand she held out to him, looking at her with those straight, steady eyes of his that there was no evading, but he made no comment of any sort.