"Couldn't help it!" Bitterly Mrs. Bathurst echoed the words. "You'll say you couldn't help him falling in love with you next! As if you didn't set out to catch him, you little artful brown-faced monkey! Oh, I always knew you were crafty, for all your simple ways. Mind, I don't say you haven't done well for yourself, you have—a deal better than you deserve. But don't ever say you couldn't help it to me again! For if you do, I'll trounce you for it, do you hear? None of your coy airs for me! I won't put up with 'em. You'll behave yourself as long as you're in this house, or I'll know the reason why."
To all of which Dinah listened in set silence, telling herself with desperate insistence that it would not be for long. Sir Eustace did not mean to be kept waiting, and he would deliver her finally and for all time.
She did not know exactly why her mother was angry. She supposed she resented the idea of losing her slave. There seemed no other possible reason, for love for her she had none. Dinah knew but too cruelly well that she had been naught but an unwelcome burden from the very earliest days of her existence. Till she met Isabel, she had never known what real mother-love could be.
She wondered if her fiancé would notice the red mark on her cheek when she carried in the teapot; but he was holding a careless conversation with her father, and only gave her a glance and a smile.
During the meal that followed he scarcely addressed her or so much as looked her way. He treated her mother with a freezing aloofness that made her tremble inwardly. She wondered how he dared.
When at length he rose to go, however, his attention returned to Dinah. He laid a dominating hand upon her shoulder. "Are you coming to see me off?"
She glanced at her mother in involuntary appeal, but failed to catch her eye. Silently she turned to the door.
He took leave of her parents with the indifference of one accustomed to popularity. "I shall be round in the morning," he said to her father. "About twelve? That'll suit me very well; unless I wait till the afternoon and bring my sister. I know she hopes to come over if she is well enough. That is, of course, if you don't object to an informal call."
He spoke as if in his opinion the very fact of its informality conferred a favour, and again Dinah trembled lest her mother should break forth into open rudeness.
But to her amazement Mrs. Bathurst seemed somewhat overawed by the princely stranger. She even smiled in a grim way as she said, "I will be at home to her."