for my sake.  He took command; he banished all the horrible people who had taken possession of me.  He gave me freedom, and he set himself to safe-guard me.  He brought me home.  He was with me night and day, or if not actually with me, within call.  He and Biddy between them brought me back.  They watched me, nursed me, cared for me.  Whenever my trouble was greater than I could bear, he was always there to help me.  He never left me; and gradually he became so necessary to me that I couldn’t contemplate life without him.  I have been terribly selfish.”  A low sob checked her utterance for a moment, and Dinah’s young arms tightened.  “I let my grief take hold of me to the exclusion of everything else.  I didn’t see—­I didn’t realize—­the sacrifice he was making.  For years I took it all as a right, living in my fog of misery and blind to all beside.  But now—­now at last—­thanks to you, little one, whom I nearly killed—­my eyes are open once more.  The fog has rolled away.  No, I can never be happy.  I am of those who wait.  But I will never again, God helping me, deprive others of happiness.  Scott shall live his own life now.  His devotion to me must come to an end.  My greatest wish in life now is that he may meet a woman worthy of him, who will love him as he deserves to be loved, before I climb the peaks of Paradise and find my beloved in the dawning.”  Isabel’s voice sank.  She pressed Dinah close against her heart.  “It will not be long,” she whispered.  “I have had a message that there is no mistaking, I know it will not be long.  But oh, darling, I do want to see him happy first.”

Dinah was crying softly.  She could find no words to utter.

So for awhile they clung together, the woman who had suffered and come at last through bitter tribulation into peace, and the child whose feet yet halted on the threshold of the enchanted country that the other had long since traversed and left behind.

Nothing further passed between them.  Isabel had said her say, and for some reason Dinah was powerless to speak.  She could think of no words to utter, and deep in her heart she was half afraid to break the silence.  That sudden agitation of hers had left her oddly confused and embarrassed.  She shrank from pursuing the matter further.

Yet for a long time that night she lay awake pondering, wondering.  Certainly Scott was different from all other men, totally, undeniably different.  He seemed to dwell on a different plane.  She could not grasp what it was about him that set him thus apart.  But what Isabel had said showed her very clearly that the spirit that dwelt behind that unimposing exterior was a force that counted, and could hold its own against odds.

She slept at last with the thought of him still present in her mind.  And in her dreams the vision of Greatheart in his shining armour came to her again, filling her with a happiness which even sleeping she did not dare to analyse, scarcely to contemplate.