He held her against his breast.  She was trembling all over.  “Well?” he said gently.

Desperately she forced herself to continue.  “I don’t belong to—­to my father—­at all; only—­only—­to her.”

“What?” he said.

She buried her shamed face a little deeper.  “That was why—­she married,” she whispered.

“Your mother herself told you that?” Sir Eustace’s voice was very low, but there was in it a danger-note that made her quail.

Someone was coming along the garden-path, but neither of them heard.  Dinah was crying with piteous, long-drawn sobs.  The telling of that tragic secret had wrung her very soul.

“Oh, don’t be angry!  You won’t be angry?” she pleaded brokenly.

His hand was on her head.  “My child, I am not angry with you,” he said.  “You were not to blame.  There, dear!  There!  Don’t cry!  Isabel will be distressed if she finds out.  We mustn’t let her know of this.”

“Or Scott either!” She lifted her face appealingly.  “Eustace, please—­please—­you won’t tell Scott?  I—­I couldn’t bear him to know.”

He looked into her beseeching eyes, and his own softened.  “It may be he will have to know some day,” he said.  “But—­not yet.”

The halting steps drew nearer, uneven, yet somehow purposeful.

Abruptly Eustace became aware of them.  He looked up sharply.  “You had better go, dear,” he whispered to the girl in his arms.  “Isabel may be wanting you at any time.  We must think of her first now.  Run in quickly and dry your eyes before anyone sees!  Come along!”

He rose, supporting her, turned her towards the window, and gently but urgently pushed her within.

She went swiftly, enough as he released her, went with her hands over her face and not a backward glance.  And Eustace wheeled back with a movement that was almost fierce and met his brother as he set foot upon the verandah.

Scott’s face was pale as death, and there was that in his eyes that could not be ignored.  Eustace answered it on the instant, briefly, with a restraint that obviously cost him an effort.  “It’s all right, Dinah is a bit upset this evening.  But she will be all right directly if we leave her alone.”

Scott did not so much as pause.  “Let me pass!” he said.

His voice was perfectly quiet, but the command of it was such that Eustace, taken unawares, gave ground as it were instinctively.  But the next moment impulsively he caught Scott’s arm.

“I say,—­Stumpy!” An odd embarrassment possessed him; he shook it off half-angrily.  “You needn’t go making mistakes—­jumping to idiotic conclusions.  I’m not cutting you out this time.”

Scott looked at him.  His light eyes held contempt.  “Oh, I know that,” he said, and there was in his slow voice a note of bitter humour that cut like a whip.  “You are never in earnest.  You were always the sort to make sport for yourself out of suffering, and then to toss the dregs of your amusement to those who are not—­sportsmen.”