She began to take comfort in the thought of her approaching wedding and all its attendant glories, picturing every detail with girlish zest. To be the queen of such a brilliant ceremony as that! To be received into the County as one entering a new world! To belong to that Society from which her mother had been excluded! To be in short—her ladyship.
A new excitement began to urge Dinah. She picked up a towel and draped it about her head and shoulders like a bridal veil. Her mother would have rated her for such vanity, but for the moment vanity was her only comfort, and the thought of her mother did not trouble her. This was how she would look on her wedding-day. There would be a wreath of orange-blossoms of course; Isabel would see to that. And—yes, Isabel had said that her bouquet should be composed of lilies-of-the-valley. She even began to wish it were her wedding morning.
The glamour spread like a rosy dawning; she forgot the clouds that loomed immediately ahead. Standing there in her night attire, poised like a brown wood-nymph on the edge of a pool, she asked herself for the first time if it were possible that she could have any pretensions to beauty. It was not in the least likely, of course. Her mother had always railed at her for the plainness of her looks. Did Eustace—did Scott—think her plain? She wondered. She wondered.
A slight sound, the opening of a window, in the room next to hers, made her start. That was Isabel's room. What was happening? It was three o'clock in the morning. Could Isabel be ill?
Very softly she opened her own window and leaned forth. It was one of those warm spring nights that come in the midst of March gales. There was a scent of violets on the air. She thought again for a fleeting second of Scott and their walk through fairyland that morning. And then she heard a voice, pitched very low but throbbing with an eagerness unutterable, and at once her thoughts were centred upon Isabel.
"Did you call me, my beloved? I am waiting! I am waiting!" said the voice.
It went forth into the sighing darkness of the night, and Dinah held her breath to listen, almost as if she expected to hear an answer.
There fell a long, long silence, and then there came a sound that struck straight to her warm heart. It seemed to her that Isabel was weeping.
She left her window with the impetuosity of one actuated by an impulse irresistible; she crossed her own room, and slipped out into the dark passage just as she was. A moment or two she fumbled feeling her way; and then her hand found Isabel's door. Softly she turned the handle, opened, and peeped in.
Isabel was on her knees by the low window-sill. Her head with its crown of silver hair was bowed upon her arm and they rested upon the bundle of letters which Dinah had seen on the very first night that she had seen Isabel. Old Biddy hovered shadow-like in the background. She made a sign to Dinah as she entered, but Dinah was too intent upon her friend to notice.