“I wonder why you say that,” Eustace said.

“Because it’s true!” With a species of feverish insistence she answered him.  “How could I help knowing?  Of course I know!  Oh, please don’t let us talk about it!  It—­it hurts me.”

“I want you to bear with me,” he said gently, “just for a few minutes.  Dinah, what if you are making a mistake?  Mistakes happen, you know.  Scott is a shy sort of chap, and immensely reserved.  Doesn’t it occur to you that he may care for you and yet be afraid—­just as you are afraid—­to let you know?”

“No,” Dinah said.  “He doesn’t.  I know he doesn’t!”

She spoke with her eyes upon the ground, her voice sunk very low.  She felt as if she were being drawn down from the heights she desired to tread.  She did not want to contemplate the problems that she knew very surely awaited her upon the lower level.  She did not want to quit her sanctuary before the time.

Sir Eustace received her assurance in silence, but he kept her hand in his, and the power of his personality seemed to penetrate to the very centre of her being.

He spoke at last almost under his breath, still closely watching her downcast face.  “Are you quite sure you still care for him—­in that way?”

She made a quick, appealing gesture.  “Oh, need I answer that?  I feel so—­ashamed.”

“No, you needn’t answer,” he made steady reply.  “But you’ve nothing to be ashamed about.  Stumpy’s an awful ass, you know,—­always has been.  He’s been head over heels in love with you ever since he met you.  No, you needn’t let that shock you.  He’s such a bashful knight he’ll never tell you so.  You’ll have to do that part of it.”  He smiled with faint irony.  “But you may take my word for it, it is so.  He has thought of nothing but you and your happiness from the very beginning of things.  And—­unlike someone else we know—­he has had the decency always to put your happiness first.”

He paused.  Dinah’s eyes had flashed up to his, green, eager, intensely alive, and behind those eyes her soul seemed to be straining like a thing in leash.  “Oh, I knew he had cared for someone,” she breathed, “But it couldn’t—­it couldn’t have been me!”

“Yes,” Sir Eustace said slowly.  “You and none other.  You wonder if it’s true—­how I know.  He’s an awful ass, as I said before, one of the few supreme fools who never think of themselves.  I knew that he was caught all right ages back in Switzerland, and—­being a low hound of mean instincts—­I set to work to cut him out.”

“Oh!” murmured Dinah.  “That was just what I did with Rose de Vigne.”

His mouth twisted a little.  “It’s a funny world, Dinah,” he said.  “Our little game has cost us both something.  I got too near the candle myself, and the scorch was pretty sharp while it lasted.  Well, to get back to my story.  Scott saw that I was beginning to give you indigestion, and—­being as I mentioned before several sorts of a fool—­he tackled