"What do you want to get up for?" demanded her mother sharply.
Sir Eustace reached his little trembling fiancée, and took the eager hand she stretched to him. His blue eyes flashed their fierce flame over her upturned, quivering face. "Take me into the kitchen—anywhere!" he murmured. "I want you to myself."
She nodded. "Don't you want any tea? All right. Dad doesn't either. I'll clear away."
"No, you don't!" her mother said. "You sit down and behave yourself!
You'll clear when I tell you to; not before."
Sir Eustace wheeled round to her, the flame of his look turning to ice.
"With your permission, madam," he said with extreme formality, "Dinah and
I are going to retire to talk things over."
He had his way. It was obvious that he meant to have it. He motioned to Dinah with an imperious gesture to precede him, and she obeyed, not daring to glance in her mother's direction.
Mrs. Bathurst said no more. Something in Sir Eustace's bearing seemed to quell her. She watched him go with eyes that shone with a hot resentment under drawn brows. It took Isabel's utmost effort to charm her back to a mood less hostile.
As for Dinah, she led her fiancé back to her father's den in considerable trepidation. To be compelled to resist her mother's will was a state of affairs that filled her with foreboding.
But the moment she was alone with him she forgot all but the one tremendous fact of his presence, for with the closing of the door he had her in his arms.
She clung to him desperately close, feeling as one struggling in deep waters, caught in a great current that would bear her swiftly, irresistibly,—whither?