Scott stood back for him to pass, but the quivering fury of the man seemed to emanate from him like the scorching draught from a blast furnace.  As Eustace said, he had got beyond himself,—­so far beyond that he was scarcely recognizable.

“Your advice be damned!” he flung back under his breath with a concentrated bitterness that was terrible.  “I shall follow my own judgment.”

Sir Eustace’s mouth curled superciliously.  He was angry too, though by no means so angry as Scott.  “Better look where you go all the same,” he observed, and passed him by, not without dignity and a secret sense of relief.

The long and fruitless vigil of the night had taught him one thing at least.  Rome was not built in a day.  He would not attempt the feat a second time, though neither would he rest till he had gained his end.

As for Scott, he would have a reckoning with him presently—­a strictly private reckoning which should demonstrate once and for all who was master.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ESCAPE OF THE PRISONER

Dinah spent her Sunday afternoon seated in a far corner of the verandah, inditing a very laboured epistle to her mother—­a very different affair from the gay little missives she scribbled to her father every other day.

The letter to her mother was a duty which must of necessity be accomplished, and perhaps in consequence she found it peculiarly distasteful.  She never knew what to say, being uncomfortably aware that a detailed account of her doings would only give rise to drastic comment.  The glories of the mountains were wholly beyond her powers of description when she knew that any extravagance of language would be at once termed high-flown and ridiculous.  The sleigh-drive of the day before was disposed of in one sentence, and the dance of the evening could not be mentioned at all.  The memory of it was like a flame in her inner consciousness.  Her cheeks still burned at the thought, and her heart leapt with a wild longing.  When would he kiss her again, she wondered?  Ah, when, when?

There was another thought at the back of her wonder which she felt to be presumptuous, but which nevertheless could not be kept completely in abeyance.  He had said that there would be no consequences; but—­had he really meant it?  Was it possible ever to awake wholly from so perfect a dream?  Was it not rather the great reality of things to which she had suddenly come, and all her past life a mere background of shadows?  How could she ever go back into that dimness now that she felt the glorious rays of this new radiance upon her?  And he also—­was it possible that he could ever forget?  Surely it had ceased to be just a game to either of them!  Surely, surely, the wonder and the rapture had caught him also into the magic web—­the golden maze of Romance!

She leaned her head on her hand and gave herself up to the great enchantment, feeling again his kisses upon lips and eyes and brow, and the thrilling irresistibility of his hold.  Ah, this was life indeed!  Ah, this was life!