"No, no!" she cried in distress. "It was not his doing. I—I just told him, that was all."
"And you now desire him for a witness," suggested Sir Eustace cynically.
Dinah looked again towards Scott. He stood against the mantelpiece, as grimly upright as his brother and again oddly she was struck by the similarity between them. She could not have said wherein it lay, but she had never seen it more marked.
He spoke very quietly in answer to her look. "I have promised to stay for as long as you want me, but if you wish to be alone with Eustace for a few minutes, I will wait in the conservatory."
"Yes, let him do that!" Imperiously Eustace accepted the suggestion. "We shall not keep him long."
Dinah stood hesitating. Scott was looking at her very steadily and reassuringly. His eyes seemed to be telling her that she had nothing to fear. But he would not move without her word, and in the end reluctantly she gave in.
"Very well," she said, in a low voice. "If—if you will wait!"
"I will," Scott said.
He limped across the room to the open door, passed through, closed it softly behind him. And Dinah was left to face her monster alone.
She did not look at Sir Eustace in the first dreadful moments that followed Scott's exit. She was horribly afraid. There was to her something inexpressibly ruthless in his very silence. She longed yet dreaded to hear him speak.