Dorothea danced into the hail, with a cry and a laugh which were stifled in her father’s embrace.  Diane rose instinctively, waiting humbly and silently where she stood.  At their parting she had torn herself, weeping and protesting, from his arms; but when he came in to find her now, he would see that she had yielded.  The door was half open through which he was to pass—­never again to leave her!

“Diane is in there.”

It was Dorothea’s voice that spoke, but the reply reached the far drawing-room only as a murmur of deep, inarticulate bass.

“What’s the matter, father?”

Dorothea’s clear voice rose above the noise of servants moving articles of luggage in the hall; but again Diane heard nothing beyond a confused muttering in answer.  She wondered that he did not come to her at once, though she supposed there was some slight prosaic reason to prevent his doing so.

“Father”—­Dorothea’s voice came again, this time with a distinct note of anxiety—­“father, you don’t look well.  Your eyes are bloodshot.”

“I’m quite well, thank you,” was the curt reply, this time perfectly audible to Diane’s ears.  “Simmons, you fool, don’t leave those steamer rugs down here!”

Diane had never heard him speak so to a servant, and she knew that something had gone amiss.  Perhaps he was annoyed that she had not come to greet him.  Perhaps it was one of the duties of her position to receive him at the door.  She had known him to give way occasionally to bursts of anger, in which a word from herself had soothed him.  Leaving her place in the corner, she was hurrying to the hall, when again Dorothea’s voice arrested her.

“Aren’t you going in to see Diane?”

“No.”

From where she stood, just within the door, Diane knew that he had flung the word over his shoulder as he went up the hail toward the stairway.  He was going to his room without speaking to her.  For an instant she stood still from consternation, but it was in emergencies like this that her spirit rose.  Without further hesitation she passed out into the hall, just as Derek Pruyn turned at the bend in the staircase, on his way upward.  For a brief second, as, standing below, she lifted her eyes to his in questioning, their glances met; but, on his part, it was without recognition.

XI

Half an hour after Derek’s return Diane was summoned into his presence in the little room where she had arranged his letters in the afternoon.  The door was standing open, and she went in slowly, her head high.  She was dressed as when she had parted from him; and the whiteness of her neck and shoulders, free from jewels, collar, or chain, was the more brilliant from contrast with the severe line of black.  In her pale face all expression was focussed into the pained inquiry of her eyes.