Dinah’s laugh, clear and ringing, came to them on the still air.  Rose’s slim figure stiffened very slightly, barely perceptibly, at the sound.  “Sir Eustace has forgotten his engagement,” she said icily.  “Yes, Captain Brent, I will come with you.”

“Good business!” he said heartily.  “It’s a glorious night.  Somebody said there was a change coming; but I don’t believe it.  Maddening if a thaw comes before the luging competition.  The run is just perfection now.  I’m going up there presently.  It’s glorious by moonlight.”

He chattered inconsequently on, happy in the fact that he had secured the prettiest girl in the hotel for his partner, and not in the least disturbed by any lack of response on her part.  To skate with her hand in hand was the utmost height of his ambition just then, his brain not being of a particularly aspiring order.

Down on the rink all was gaiety and laughter.  The lights shone ruby, emerald, and sapphire, upon the darting figures.  The undernote of the rushing skates made magic music everywhere.  The whole scene was fantastic—­a glittering fairyland of colour and enchantment.

“Each evening seems more splendid than the last,” declared Dinah.

“They always will if you spend them in my company,” said Sir Eustace.  “Do you know I could very soon teach you to skate as perfectly as you dance?”

“I believe you could teach me anything,” she answered happily.

“Given a free hand I believe I could,” he said.  “But the gift is yours, not mine.  You have the most wonderful knack of divining a mood.  You adapt yourself instinctively.  I never knew anyone respond so perfectly to the unspoken wish.  How is it, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” she answered shyly.  “But I can’t help understanding what you want.”

“Does that mean that we are kindred spirits?” he asked, and suddenly the clasp of his hands was close and intimate.

“I expect it does,” said Dinah; but she said it with a touch of uneasiness.  The voice that had spoken within her the night before, warning her, urging her to be gone, was beginning to murmur again, bidding her to beware.

She turned from the subject with ready versatility, obedient to the danger-signal.  “Oh, there is Rose!  I am afraid I ran away from her after dinner.  They went upstairs for coffee, but I was so dreadfully afraid of being stopped that I hung behind and escaped.  I do hope the Colonel won’t be in a wax again.  But I don’t see that there was anything wicked in it; for Lady Grace herself is coming to look on presently.”

“I skated with Miss de Vigne nearly all the afternoon,” observed Sir Eustace.  “But she is a regular ice-maiden.  I couldn’t get any enthusiasm out of her.  Tell me, is she like that all through?  Or is it just a pose?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dinah said.  “I’ve never got through the outer crust.  But then of course I’m far beneath her.”