It was over at last. Only the wedding-dress remained. But as Mrs. Bathurst laid merciless hands upon this also, Dinah uttered a bitter cry.
"Oh, not that! Not that!"
Her mother paused. "Will you wear it to-morrow if Sir Eustace will have you?" she demanded.
"No! Oh no!" Dinah tottered back against her bed and covered her eyes.
She could not watch the destruction of that fairy thing. But it went so quickly, so quickly. When she looked up again, it had crumbled away like the rest, and the shimmering veil with it. Nothing, nothing was left of all the splendour that had been hers.
She sank down on the foot of the bed. Surely her mother would be satisfied now! Surely her lust for vengeance could devise no further punishment!
She was nearing the end of her strength, and she was beginning to know it. The room swam before her dizzy sight. Her mother's figure loomed gigantic, scarcely human.
She saw her poke down the last of the cinders and turn to the door. There was a pungent smell of smoke in the room. She wondered if she would ever be able to cross that swaying, seething floor to open the window. She closed her eyes and listened with straining ears for the closing of the door.
It came, and following it, a sharp click as of the turning of a key. She looked up at the sound, and saw her mother come back to her. She was carrying something in one hand, something that dangled and east a snake-like shadow.
She came to the cowering girl and caught her by the arm. "Now get up!" she ordered brutally. "And take the rest of your punishment!"
Truly Dinah drank the cup of bitterness to the dregs that night. Mentally she had suffered till she had almost ceased to feel. But physically her powers of endurance had not been so sorely tried. But her nerves were strung to a pitch when even a sudden movement made her tingle, and upon this highly-tempered sensitiveness the punishment now inflicted upon her was acute agony. It broke her even more completely than it had broken her in childhood. Before many seconds had passed the last shred of her self-control was gone.
Guy Bathurst, lying comfortably in bed, was aroused from his first slumber by a succession of sharp sounds like the lashing of a loosened creeper against the window, but each sound was followed by an anguished cry that sank and rose again like the wailing of a hurt child.
He turned his head and listened. "By Jove! That's too bad of Lydia," he said. "I suppose she won't be satisfied till she's had her turn, but I shall have to interfere if it goes on."