“Did you want me to come and take care of you, my darling?”

Dinah’s heart smote her for the deception, but she answered bravely enough, “Oh, Isabel, yes, yes!  You are so good to me, I want you always.”

“Dear heart!” Isabel said, with a sigh, and folded her closer as though she would guard her against all the world.

She was the first to fall asleep notwithstanding, while Dinah lay motionless and troubled far into the night.  She wished that Biddy would give her permission to tell Scott, for without that permission such a step seemed like a betrayal of confidence.  But for some reason Biddy evidently thought that Scott had enough on his shoulders just then.  And so it seemed, she could only wait—­only wait.

She did not want to burden Scott unduly either, and there was something about him just now, something of a repressing nature, that held her back from confiding in him too freely.  He seemed to have raised a barrier between them since their return to England which no intimacy ever quite succeeded in scaling.  Full of brotherly kindness though he was, the old frank fellowship was gone.  It was as though he had realized her dependence upon him, and were trying with the utmost gentleness to make her stand alone.

Dinah slept at last from sheer weariness, and forgot her troubles.  She must not tell Scott, she could not tell Eustace, and so there was no other course but silence.  But the anxiety of it weighed upon her even through her slumber.  Life was far more interesting than of yore.  But never, never before had it been so full of doubts and fears.  The complexity of it all was like an endless net, enmeshing her however warily she stepped.

And always, and always, at the back of her mind there lurked the dread conviction that one day the net would be drawn close, and she would find herself a helpless prisoner in the grip of a giant.

CHAPTER XII

THE DIVINE SPARK

With the morning Dinah found her anxieties less oppressive.  Isabel was becoming so much more like herself that she was able to put the matter from her and in a measure forget it.  Like Biddy, she began to hope that by postponing the evil hour they might possibly evade it altogether.  For there was nothing abnormal about Isabel during that day or those that succeeded it.  The time passed quickly.  There was much to be done, much to be discussed and decided, and their thoughts were fully occupied.  Dinah felt as one whirled in a torrent.  She could not think of the great undercurrent.  She could deal only with the things on the surface.