That was the hardest to face of all, that he should subdue himself, restrain his passion to pour out to her that which was infinitely greater than passion; she made a little sound that seemed to come straight from her heart.
"Oh, I can't tell you!" she sobbed into his shoulder. "I can't think how I ever made such a terrible mistake. But if only--oh, if only--you could marry Rose instead! It would be so very much better for everybody."
"Marry Rose!" he said. "What on earth made you think of that at this stage?"
"I always thought you would--in Switzerland," she explained rather incoherently. "I--never really thought--I could cut her out."
"Is that what you did it for?" An odd note sounded in Sir Eustace's voice, as though some irony of circumstance had forced his sense of humour.
"Just at first," whispered Dinah. "Oh, don't be angry! Please don't be angry! You--you weren't in earnest either just at first."
He considered the matter in silence for a few moments. Then half-quizzically, "I don't see that that is any reason for throwing me over now," he said. "If you don't love me to-day, you will to-morrow."
She shook her head.
"Quite sure?" he said.
"Quite," she answered faintly.
His hand was still upon her head, and it remained there. He held her closely pressed to him.
For a space again he was silent, his dark face bent over her, his lips actually touching her hair. Of what was passing in his mind she had no notion, and she dared not lift her head to look. She dreaded each moment a return of that tornado-like passion that had so often appalled her. But it did not come. His arms held her indeed, but without violence, and in his stillness there was no tension to denote its presence.
He spoke at length, almost whispering. "Dinah, who is the lucky fellow? Tell me!"
She started away from him. She almost cried out in her dismay. But he stopped her. He took her face between his hands with an insistence that would not be denied. He looked closely, searchingly, into her eyes.
"Is it Scott?" he said.
She did not answer him. She stood as one paralysed, and up over face and neck and all her trembling body, enwrapping her like a flame, there rose a scorching, agonizing blush.
He held her there before him and watched it, and she saw that his eyes were piercingly bright, with the brightness of burnished steel. She could not turn her own away from them, though her whole soul shrank from that stark scrutiny. In anguish of mind she faced him, helpless, unutterably ashamed, while that burning blush throbbed fiercely through every vein and gradually died away.