"Of course I will help you, dear child. I will always help you with anything so long as it is in my power."
Very tenderly Isabel reassured her till presently the scared feeling subsided.
They went up later to the picture-gallery and joined Eustace whom they found smoking there. His mood also had changed by that time, and he introduced his ancestors to Dinah with complete good humour.
Isabel remained with them, but she talked very little in her brother's presence; and when after a time Dinah turned to her she was startled by the deadly weariness of her face.
"Oh, I am tiring you!" she exclaimed, with swift compunction.
But Isabel assured her with a smile that this was not so. She was a little tired, but that was nothing new.
"But you generally rest before dinner!" said Dinah, full of self-reproach, "Eustace, ought she not to rest?"
Eustace glanced at his sister half-reluctantly, and a shade of concern crossed his face also. "Are you feeling faint?" he asked her. "Do you want anything?"
"No, no! Of course not!" She averted her face sharply from his look. "Go on talking to Dinah! I am all right."
She moved to a deep window-embrasure, and sat down on the cushioned seat. The spring dusk was falling. She gazed forth into it with that look of perpetual searching that Dinah had grown to know in the earliest days of their acquaintance. She was watching, she was waiting,—for what? She longed to draw near and comfort her, but the presence of Eustace made that impossible. She did not know how to dismiss him.