Greatheart, Ethel May Dell [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

poor heart of her was broke entirely. She said she'd lost touch with her darling husband and he'd never come back to her again."

"Biddy!" Horror undisguised sounded in Dinah's low voice. "He never did such a thing as that!"

"He did that!" A queer species of triumph was apparent in Biddy's rejoinder; malice twinkled for a second in her eyes. "I've told ye! I've told ye!" she said. And then, with sharp anxiety. "But ye'll not tell anyone as ye know, Miss Dinah. Ye promised, now didn't ye? Miss Isabel wouldn't that any should know—not even Master Scott. He was away when it happened, dining down at the Vicarage he was. And Miss Isabel she says to me, 'For the life of ye, don't tell Master Scott! He'd be that angry,' she says, 'and Sir Eustace would murder him entirely if it came to a quarrel.' She was that insistent, Miss Dinah, and I knew there was truth in what she said. Master Scott has the heart of a lion. He never knew the meaning of fear from his babyhood. And Sir Eustace is a monster of destruction when once his blood's up. And he minds what Master Scott says more than anyone. So I promised, Miss Dinah dear, the same as you have. And so he doesn't know to this day. Sir Eustace, ye see, has been in a touchy mood all along, ever since ye left. Like gunpowder he's been, and Master Scott has had a difficult enough time with him; and Miss Isabel has kept it from him so that he thinks it was just your going again that made her fret so. There, now ye know all, Miss Dinah dear, and don't ye for the love of heaven tell a soul what I've told ye! Miss Isabel would never forgive me if she came to know. Ah, the saints preserve us, what's that?"

A brisk tap at the door had made her jump with violence. She went to parley with a guilty air.

In a moment or two she shut the door and came back. "It's that flighty young French hussy, Miss Dinah; her they call Yvonne. She says Sir Eustace is waiting for ye downstairs."

A great revulsion of feeling went through Dinah. It shook her like an overwhelming tempest and passed, leaving her deadly cold. She turned white to the lips.

"I can't go to him, Biddy," she said. "I can't dance to-night. Yvonne must tell him."

Biddy gave her a searching look. "Ye won't let him find out, Miss Dinah?" she urged. "Won't he guess now if ye stay up here?"

The earnest entreaty of the old bright eyes moved her. She turned to the door. "Oh, very well. I'll go myself and tell him."

"Ye won't let him suspect, mavourneen—mavourneen?" pleaded Biddy desperately.

"No, Biddy, no! Haven't I sworn it a dozen times already?" Dinah had reached the door; she looked back for a moment and her look was steadfast notwithstanding the deathly pallor of her face. Then she passed slowly forth, and heard old Biddy softly turn the key behind her, making assurance doubly sure.

Slowly she moved along the passage. It was deserted, but the sound of laughing voices and the tuning of violins floated up from below. Again that feeling that was akin to physical sickness assailed Dinah. Down there he was waiting for her, waiting to be intoxicated into headlong, devouring passion by her dancing. She seemed to feel his arms already holding her, straining her to him, so that the warmth of him was as a fiery atmosphere all about her, encompassing her, possessing her. Her whole body burned at the thought, and then again was cold—cold as though she had drunk a draught of poison. She stood still, feeling too sick to go on.

And then, while she waited, she heard a step. Her heart seemed to spring into her throat, throbbing wildly like a caged bird seeking freedom. She drew back against the wall, trembling from head to foot.

He came along the passage, magnificent, princely, confident, swinging his shoulders with that semi-conscious swagger she knew so well. He spied her where she stood, and she heard his brief, half-mocking laugh as he strode to her.

"Ah, Daphne! Hiding as usual!" he said.

He took her between his hands, and she felt the mastery of him in that free hold. She stood as a prisoner in his grasp. Her new-found resolution was gone at the first contact with that overwhelming personality of his. She hung her head in quivering distress.

He bent down, bringing his face close to hers. He tried to look into the eyes that she kept downcast.

And suddenly he spoke again, softly into her ear. "Why so shy, little sweetheart? Are you getting frightened now the time is so near?"

Her breathing quickened at his tone. Possessive though it was, it held that tender note that was harder to bear than all his fiercest passion. She could not speak in answer. No words would come.

He put his arm around her and held her close. "But you mustn't be afraid of me," he said. "Don't you know I love you? Don't you know I am going to make you the happiest little woman in the world?"

Dinah choked down some scalding tears. She longed to escape from the holding of his arm, and yet her torn spirit felt the comfort of it. She stood silent, shaken, unnerved, piteously conscious of her utter weakness—the weakness wrought by that iron discipline that had never suffered her to have any will of her own.

He put up a hand and pressed her drooping head against his shoulder. "There's nothing very dreadful in being married, dear," he told her. "I'm not such a devouring monster as I may seem. Why, I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head. They are all precious to me."

She quivered at his use of the word that Biddy had employed with such venom only a few minutes before; but still she said nothing. What could she say? Against this new weapon of his she was more helpless than ever. She hid her face against him and strove for self-control.

He kissed her temple and the clustering hair above it. "There now! You are not going to be a silly little scared fawn any more. Come along and dance it off!"

His arm encircled her shoulders; he began to lead her to the stairs.

And Dinah went, slave-like in her submission, but hating herself the more for every step she took.

They went to the ballroom, and presently they danced. But the old subtle charm was absent. Her feet moved to the rhythm of the music, her body swayed and pulsed to the behest of his; but her spirit stood apart, bruised and downcast and very much alone. Her gilded palace had fallen all about her in ruins. The deliverance to which she had looked forward so eagerly was but another bondage that would prove more cruel and more enslaving than the first. She longed with all her quivering heart to run away and hide.

He was very kind to her, more considerate than she had ever known him. Perhaps he missed the fairy abandonment which had so delighted him in her dancing of old; but he found no fault; and when the dance was over he did not lead her away to some private corner as she had dreaded, but took her instead to her father and stood with him for some time in talk.

She saw Scott in the distance, but he did not approach her while Eustace was with them, and when her fiancé turned away at length he had disappeared.

They were left comparatively alone, and Dinah slipped an urgent hand into her father's. "I want to go home, Daddy. I'm so tired."

He looked at her in surprise, but she managed to muster a smile in reply, and he was not observant enough to note the distress that lay behind it.

"Had enough of it, eh?" he questioned. "Well, I think you're wise. You'll be busy to-morrow. By all means, let's go!"

It was not till the very last moment that she saw Scott again. He came forward just as she was passing through the hall to the front door.

He took the hand she held out to him, looking at her with those straight, steady eyes of his that there was no evading, but he made no comment of any sort.

"Mr. Grey is coming by a morning train to-morrow," he said. "May I bring him to call upon you in the afternoon? I believe he wants to run through the wedding-service with you beforehand."

He smiled as he said it, but Dinah could not smile in answer. There was something ominous to her in that last sentence, something that made her think of the clanking of chains. She was relieved to hear her father answer for her.

"Come by all means! Nothing like a dress rehearsal to make things go smoothly. I'll tell my wife to expect you."

Scott's hand relinquished hers, and she felt suddenly cold. She murmured a barely audible "Good night!" and turned away.

From the portico she glanced back and saw Sir Eustace leading Rose de Vigne to the ballroom. The light shone full upon them. They made a splendid couple. And a sudden bizarre thought smote her. This was what the gods had willed. This had been the weaving of destiny; and she—she—had dared to intervene, frustrating, tearing the gilded, smooth-wrought threads apart.

Ah well! It was done now. It was too late to draw back. But the wrath of the gods remained to be faced. Already it was upon her, and there was no escape.

As one who hears a voice speaking from a far distance, she heard herself telling her father that all was well with her and she had spent an enjoyable evening.

Then she lay back in the car with clenched hands, and listened trembling to the thundering wheels of Destiny.

CHAPTER XV THE SAPPHIRE FOR FRIENDSHIP

No girl ever worked harder in preparation for her own wedding than did
Dinah on the following day.

That she had scarcely slept all night was a fact that no one suspected. Work-a-day Dinah, as her father was wont to call her, was not an object of great solicitude to any in her home-circle, and for the first time in her life she was thankful that such was the case.

Her mother's hard gipsy eyes watched only for delinquencies, and her rating tongue was actually a relief to Dinah after the dread solitude of those long hours. She was like a prisoner awaiting execution, and even that harsh companionship was in a measure helpful to her.

The time passed with appalling swiftness. When the luncheon hour arrived she was horrified to find that the morning had gone. She could eat nothing, a fact which raised a jeering laugh from her mother and a chaffing remonstrance from her father. Billy had gone riding on Rupert and had not returned. Billy always came and went exactly as he pleased.

One or two more presents from friends of her father's had arrived by the midday post. Mrs. Bathurst unpacked them, admiring them with more than a touch of envy, assuring Dinah that she was a very lucky girl, luckier than she deserved to be; but Dinah, though she acquiesced, had no heart for presents. She could only see—as she had seen all through the night—the piteous, marred face of a woman who had passed through such an intensity of suffering as she could only dimly guess at into the dark of utter despair. She could only hear, whichever way she turned, the clanking of the chains that in so brief a time were to be welded irrevocably about herself.

Luncheon over, she went up to dress and to finish the packing of the new trunks which were to accompany her upon her honeymoon. She had not even yet begun to realize these strange belongings of hers. She could no longer visualize herself as a bride. She looked upon all the finery as destined for another, possibly Rose de Vigne, but emphatically not for herself.

The wedding-dress and veil lying in their box, swathed in tissue-paper, had a gossamer unreality about them that even the sense of touch could not dispel. No—no! The bride of to-morrow was surely, surely, not herself!

They were to spend the first part of their honeymoon at a little place on the Cornish coast, very far from everywhere, as Sir Eustace said. She thought of that little place with a vague wonder. It was the stepping-stone between the life she