"May I come in?" said Sir Eustace.
He stood in the doorway, a gigantic figure to Dinah's unaccustomed eyes, and looked in upon her with a careless smile on his handsome face.
"Oh, please do!" she said.
She was lying on a couch under a purple rug belonging to Isabel. Very fragile and weak she looked, but her face was flushed and eager, her eyes alight with welcome. She thought he had never looked so splendid, so godlike, as at that moment. She wanted to hold out both her arms to him and be borne upward to Olympus in his embrace.
He came forward with his easy carriage and stood beside her. His smile was one of kindly indulgence. He looked down at her as he might have looked upon an infant.
An uneasy sense of her own insignificance went through Dinah. She could not remember that he had ever regarded her thus before. A faint, faint throb of resentment also pulsed through her. His attitude was so suggestive of the mere casual acquaintance. Surely--surely he had not forgotten!
"Won't you sit down?" she asked in a small voice that was quite unconsciously formal.
He seated himself in the chair that had been placed at her side. "So they have left you behind to be mended, have they?" he said. "I hope it is a satisfactory process, is it?"
She had meant to give him her hand, but as he did not seem to expect it she refrained from doing so. A great longing to cover her face and burst into tears took possession of her; she resisted it frantically, with all her strength.
"Oh yes, I am getting better, thank you," she said, in a voice that quivered in spite of her. "I am afraid I have been a great nuisance to everybody. I am sure the de Vignes thought so; and--and--I expect you do too."
She could not keep the tears from springing to her eyes, strive as she would. He was so different--so different. He might have been a total stranger, sitting there beside her.
Yet as he looked at her, she felt something of the old quick thrill; for the blue eyes regarded her with a slightly warmer interest as he said, "I can't answer for the de Vignes of course, but it doesn't seem to me that either they or I have had much cause for complaint. I shouldn't fret about that if I were you."
She commanded herself with an effort. "I don't. Only it isn't nice to feel a burden to anyone, is it? You wouldn't like it, would you?"