Greatheart Part 70

She could not feel that she would ever shine there. There were so many bright lights, and though her father was instantly and completely at home she felt dazzled and strange, till all-unexpectedly someone came to her through the great lamp-lit hall, haltingly yet with purpose, and held her hand and asked her how she was.

The quiet grasp steadied her, and in a moment she was radiantly happy, all her troubles and anxieties swept from her path. "Oh, Scott!" she said, and her eyes beamed upon him the greeting her lips somehow refused to utter.

He was laughing a little; his look was quizzical. "I have been on the look-out for you," he told her. "It's the best man's privilege, isn't it?

Won't you introduce me to your father?"

She did so, and then Rose glided forward, exquisite in maize satin and pearls, and smilingly detached her from the two men and led her upstairs.

"We are to have a little informal dance presently," she said. "Did I tell you in my note? No? Oh, well, no doubt it will be a pleasant little surprise for you. How very charming you are looking, my dear! I didn't know you had it in you. Did you choose that pretty frock yourself?"

Dinah, with something of her mother's bluntness of speech, explained that the creation in question had been Isabel's choice, and Rose smiled as one who fully understood the situation.

"She has been very good to you, poor soul, has she not?" she said. "She is not coming down to-night. The journey has fatigued her terribly. That funny, old-fashioned nurse of hers has asked very particularly that she may not be disturbed, except to see you for a few minutes later."

"Is she worse?" asked Dinah, startled.

Whereat Rose shook her dainty head. "Has she ever been better? No, poor thing, I am afraid her days are numbered, nor could one in kindness wish it otherwise. Still, I mustn't sadden you, dear. You have got to look your very best to-night, or Sir Eustace will be disappointed. There are quite a lot of pretty girls coming, and you know what he is." Rose uttered a little self-conscious laugh. "Put on a tinge of colour, dear!"

she said, as Dinah stood before the mirror in her room. "You look such a little brown thing; just a faint glow on your cheeks would be such an improvement."

"No, thank you," said Dinah, and flushed suddenly and hotly at the thought of what she had once endured at her mother's hands for daring to pencil the shadows under her eyes. It had been no more than a girlish trick--an experiment to pa.s.s an idle moment. But it had been treated as an offence of immeasurable enormity, and she winced still at the memory of all that that moment's vanity had entailed.

Rose looked at her appraisingly. "No, perhaps you don't need it after all, not anyhow when you blush like that. You have quite a pretty blush, Dinah, and you are wise to make the most of it. Are you ready, dear? Then we will go down."

She rustled forth with Dinah beside her, shedding a soft fragrance of some Indian scent as she moved that somehow filled Dinah with indignation, like a resentful b.u.t.terfly in search of more wholesome delights.

Eustace was in the hall when they descended. He came forward to meet his _fiancee_, and her heart throbbed fast and hard at the sight of him. But his manner was so strictly casual and impersonal that her agitation speedily pa.s.sed, and by the time they were seated side by side at dinner--for the last time in their lives, as the Colonel jocosely remarked--she could not feel that she had ever been anything nearer to him than a pa.s.sing acquaintance.

She was shy and very quiet. The hubbub of voices, the brilliance of it all, overwhelmed her. If Scott had been on her other side, she would have been much happier, but he was far away making courteous conversation for the benefit of a deaf old lady whom no one else made the smallest effort to entertain.

Suddenly Sir Eustace disengaged himself from the general talk and turned to her. "Dinah!" he said.

Her heart leapt again. She glanced at him and caught the gleam of the hunter in those rapier-bright eyes of his.

He leaned slightly towards her, his smile like a shining cloak, hiding his soul. "Daphne," he said, and his voice came to her subtle, caressing, commanding, through the gay tumult all about them, "there is going to be dancing presently. Did you hear?"

"Yes," she whispered with lowered eyes.

"You will dance with only one to-night," he said. "That is understood, is it?"

"Yes," she whispered again.

"Good!" he said. And then imperiously, "Why don't you drink some wine?"

She made a slight, startled movement. "I never do, I don't like it."

"You need it," he said, and made a curt sign to one of the servants.

Wine was poured into her gla.s.s, and she drank submissively. The discipline of the past two weeks had made her wholly docile. And the wine warmed and cheered her in a fashion that made her think that perhaps he was right and she had needed it.

When the dinner came to an end she was feeling far less scared and strange. Guests were beginning to a.s.semble for the dance, and as they pa.s.sed out people whom she knew by sight but to whom she had never spoken came up and talked with her as though they were old friends. Several men asked her to dance, but she steadily refused them all. Her turn would come later.

"I am going up to see Mrs. Everard," was her excuse. "She is expecting me."

And then Scott came, and she turned to him with eager welcome. "Oh, please, will you take me to see Isabel?"

He gave her a straight, intent look, and led her out of the throng.

His hand rested upon her arm as they mounted the stairs and she thought he moved with deliberate slowness. At the top he spoke.

"Dinah, before you see her I ought to prepare you for a change. She has been losing ground lately. She is not--what she was."

Dinah stopped short. "Oh, Scott!" She said in breathless dismay.

His hand pressed upon her, but it seemed to be imparting strength rather than seeking it. "I think I told you that day at the Dower House that she was nearing the end of her journey. I don't want to sadden you. You mustn't be sad. But you couldn't see her without knowing. It won't be quite yet; but it will be--soon."

He spoke with the utmost quietness; his face never varied. His eyes with their steady comradeship looked straight into hers, stilling her distress.

"She is so tired," he said gently. "I don't think it ought to grieve us that her rest is drawing near at last. She has so longed for it, poor girl."

"Oh, Scott!" Dinah said again, but she said it this time without consternation. His steadfast strength had given her confidence.

"Shall we go to her?" he said. "At least, I think it would be better if you went alone. She is quite determined that nothing shall interfere with your coming happiness, so you mustn't let her think you shocked or grieved. I thought it best to prepare you, that's all."

He led her gravely along the pa.s.sage, and presently stopped outside a closed door. He knocked three times as of old, and Dinah stood waiting as one on the threshold of a holy place.

The door, was opened by Biddy, and he pressed her forward. "Don't stay long!" he said. "She is very tired to-night, and Eustace will be wanting you."

She squeezed his hand in answer and pa.s.sed within.

Biddy's wrinkled brown face smiled a brief welcome under its snowy cap.

She motioned her to approach. "Ye'll not stay long, Miss Dinah dear," she whispered. "The poor lamb's very tired to-night."

Dinah went forward.

The window was wide open, and the rush of the west wind filled the room.

Isabel was lying in bed with her face to the night, wide-eyed, intent, still as death.

Noiselessly Dinah drew near. There was something in the atmosphere--a ghostly, hovering presence--that awed her. In the sound of that racing wind she seemed to hear the beat of mighty wings.

She uttered no word, she was almost afraid to speak. But when she reached the bed, when she bent and looked into Isabel's face, she caught her breath in a gasping cry. For she was shocked--shocked unutterably--by what she saw. Shrivelled as the face of one who had come through fiery tortures, ashen-grey, with eyes in which the anguish of the burnt-out flame still lingered, eyes that were dead to hope, eyes that were open only to the darkness, such was the face upon which she looked.

Biddy was by her side in a moment, speaking in a rapid whisper. "Arrah thin, Miss Dinah darlint, don't ye be scared at all! She'll speak to ye in a minute, sure. It's only that she's tired to-night. She'll be more herself like in the morning."

Dinah hung over the still figure. Biddy's whispering was as the buzzing of a fly. She heard it with the outer sense alone.

"Isabel!" she said; and again with a pa.s.sionate earnestness, "Isabel--darling--my darling--what has happened to you?"

At the sound of that pleading voice Isabel moved, seeming as it were to return slowly from afar.