Dinah gave a cry of dismay, and started to her feet. "Mother! What are you doing? Mother! Are you mad?"
Mrs. Bathurst looked at her with eyes of blazing vindictiveness. "If you are not going to be married, you won't need a trousseau," she said grimly. "These things are quite unfit for a girl in your station. For Lady Studley they would of course have been suitable, but not for such as you."
She turned back to the open trunk with the words, and began to sweep together every article of clothing it contained. Dinah watched her in horror-stricken silence. She remembered with odd irrelevance how once in her childhood for some petty offence her mother had burnt a favourite doll, and then had whipped her soundly for crying over her loss.
She did not cry now. Her tears seemed frozen. She did not feel as if she could ever cry again. The cold that enwrapped her was beginning to reach her heart. She thought she was getting past all feeling.
So in mute despair she watched the sacrifice of all that Isabel's loving care had provided. So much thought had been spent upon the delicate finery. They had discussed and settled each dainty garment together. She had revelled in the thought of all the good things which she was to wear—she who had never worn anything that was beautiful before. And now—and now—they shrivelled in the roaring flame and dropped into grey ash in the fender.
It was over at last. Only the wedding-dress remained. But as Mrs.
Bathurst laid merciless hands upon this also, Dinah uttered a bitter cry.
"Oh, not that! Not that!"
Her mother paused. "Will you wear it to-morrow if Sir Eustace will have you?" she demanded.
"No! Oh no!" Dinah tottered back against her bed and covered her eyes.
She could not watch the destruction of that fairy thing. But it went so quickly, so quickly. When she looked up again, it had crumbled away like the rest, and the shimmering veil with it. Nothing, nothing was left of all the splendour that had been hers.