A soft footfall near her made her look up sharply, and she saw Rose de Vigne approaching.  Rose was looking even more beautiful than usual, yet for the first time Dinah contemplated her without any under-current of envy.  She moved slightly to make room for her.

“I haven’t come to stay,” Rose announced with her quiet, well-satisfied smile, as she drew near.  “I have promised to sing at to-night’s concert and the padre wants to look through my songs.  Well, Dinah, my dear, how are you getting on?  Is that a letter to your mother?”

Dinah suppressed a sigh.  “Yes.  I’ve only just begun it.  I don’t know in the least what to say.”

Rose lifted her pretty brows.  “What about your new friend Sir Eustace Studley’s sister?  Wouldn’t she be interested to hear of her?  Poor soul, it’s lamentably sad to think that she should be mentally deranged.  Some unfortunate strain in the family, I should say, to judge by the younger brother’s appearance also.”

Dinah’s green eyes gleamed a little.  “I don’t see anything very unusual about him,” she remarked.  “There are plenty of little men in the world.”

“And crippled?” smiled Rose.

“I shouldn’t call him a cripple,” rejoined Dinah quickly.  “He is quite active.”

“Many cripples are, dear,” Rose pointed out.  “He has learnt to get the better of his infirmity, but nothing can alter the fact that the infirmity exists.  I call him a most peculiar little person to look at.  Of course I don’t deny that he may be very nice in other ways.”

Dinah bit her lip and was silent.  To hear Scott described as nice was to her mind less endurable than to hear him called peculiar.  But somehow she could not bring herself to discuss him, so she choked down her indignation and said nothing.

Rose seated herself beside her.  “I call Sir Eustace a very interesting man,” she observed.  “He fully makes up for the deficiencies of his brother and sister.  He seems to be very kind-hearted too.  Didn’t I see him helping you with your skating the other night?”

Dinah’s eyes shone again with a quick and ominous light.  “He helped you with your ski-ing too, didn’t he?” she said.

“He did, dear.  I had a most enjoyable afternoon.”  Rose smiled again as over some private reminiscence.  “He told me he thought you were coming on, in fact he seems to think that you have the makings of quite a good skater.  It’s a pity your opportunities are so limited, dear.”  Rose paused to utter a soft laugh.

“I don’t see anything funny in that,” remarked Dinah.

“No, no!  Of course not.  I was only smiling at the way in which he referred to you.  ‘That little brown cousin of yours’ he said, ’makes me think of a water-vole, there one minute and gone the next.’  He seemed to think you a rather amusing child, as of course you are.”  Rose put up a delicate hand and playfully caressed the glowing cheek nearest to her.  “I told him you were not any relation, but just a dear little friend of mine who had never seen anything of the world before.  And he laughed and said, ‘That is why she looks like a chocolate baby out of an Easter egg.’”