"Shouldn't I?" he said and for a moment his mouth was grim. "I am not accustomed to being regarded as an amiable nonentity, I assure you. It's settled then, is it? The first week in April? And you are to come to us for at least a fortnight beforehand."
Dinah nodded, her head bent. "All right,--if Mother doesn't mind."
"What would happen if she did?" he asked curiously.
"It just wouldn't be done," she made answer.
"Wouldn't it? Not if you insisted?"
"I couldn't insist," she said, her voice very low.
"Why couldn't you? I should have thought you had a will of your own. Don't you ever assert yourself?"
"Against her? No, never!" Dinah gave a little shudder. "Don't let's talk of it!" she said. "Isn't it time to go back? I believe I ought to be clearing away."
He detained her for a moment. "You're not going to work like a nigger when you are married to me," he said.
She smiled up at him, a merry, dimpling smile. "Oh no, I shall just enjoy myself then--like Rose de Vigne. I shall be much too grand to work. There! I really must go back. Thank you again ever so much--ever so much--for the lovely ring. I hope you'll never find out how unworthy I am of it."
She drew his head down with quivering courage and bestowed a butterfly kiss upon his cheek. And then in a second she was gone from his hold, gone like a woodland elf with a tinkle of laughter and the skipping of fairy feet.
Sir Eustace followed her flight with his eyes only, but in those eyes was the leaping fire of a passion that burned around her in an ever-narrowing circle. She knew that it was there, but she would not look back to see it. For deep in her heart she feared that flame as she feared nothing else on earth.