“Did Isabel go without a sleeping-draught last night?”

Scott shook his head.

Eustace’s frown became even more pronounced.  “Did Biddy administer it on her own?”

“No.  I authorized it.”  Scott’s voice was low.  He met his brother’s look with level directness.

Eustace leaned towards him across the table.  “I won’t have it, Stumpy,” he said very decidedly.  “I told you so yesterday.”

“I know.”  Very steadily Scott made answer.  “But last night there was no alternative.  It is impossible to do the thing suddenly.  She has hardly got over the journey yet.”

“Rubbish!” said Eustace curtly.

Scott slightly raised his shoulders, and said no more.

“It comes to this,” Eustace said, speaking with stern insistence.  “If you can’t—­or won’t—­assert your authority, I shall assert mine.  It is all a question of influence.”

“Or forcible persuasion,” said Scott, with a touch of irony.

“Very well.  Call it that!  It is in a good cause.  If you haven’t the strength of mind, I have; and I shall exercise it.  These drugs must be taken away.  Can’t you see it’s the only possible thing to do?”

“Not yet,” Scott said.  He was still facing his brother’s grim regard very gravely and unflinchingly.  “I tell you, man, it is too soon.  She is better than she used to be.  She is calmer, more reasonable.  We must do the thing gradually, if at all.  To interfere forcibly would do infinitely more harm than good.  I know what I am saying.  I know her far better than you do now.  I am in closer touch with her.  You are out of sympathy.  You only startle her when you try to persuade her to anything.  You must leave her to me.  I understand her.  I know how to help her.”

“You haven’t achieved much in the last seven years,” Eustace observed.

“But I have achieved something.”  Scott’s answer was wholly free from resentment.  He spoke with quiet confidence.  “I know it’s a slow process.  But she is moving in the right direction.  Give her time, old chap!  I firmly believe that she will come back to us by slow degrees.”

“Damnably slow,” commented Eustace.  “You’re so infernally deliberate always.  You talk as if it were your life-work.”

Scott’s eyes shone with a whimsical light.  “I begin to think it is,” he said.  “Have you finished?  Suppose we go.”  He gathered up the sheaf of papers at his elbow and rose.  “I will attend to these at once.”

Eustace strode down the long room looking neither to right nor left, moving with a free, British arrogance that served to emphasize somewhat cruelly the meagreness and infirmity of the man behind him.  Yet it was upon the latter’s slight, halting figure that Dinah’s eyes dwelt till it finally limped out of sight, and in her look were wonder and a vagrant admiration.  There was an undeniable attraction about Scott that affected her very curiously, but wherein it lay she could not possibly have said.  She was furious when a murmured comment and laugh from some girls at the next table reached her.