e tenderness of them
thrilled her through and through. "Why, child, what has happened?" she
whispered. "Tell me! Tell me!"

But Dinah only hid her face a little deeper. "I don't know how," she
murmured.

There fell a silence. Then, under her breath, Isabel spoke. "My darling,
whisper--just whisper! Who--is it?"

And very, very faintly, at last Dinah made answer. "It--it is--Sir
Eustace."

There fell another silence, longer, deeper, than the first. Then Isabel
uttered a short, hard sigh, and, stooping, kissed the bowed, curly head.
"God bless and keep you always, dearest!" she said.

Something in the words--or was it the tone?--pierced Dinah. She turned
her face slightly upwards. "I--I was afraid you wouldn't be pleased," she
faltered. "Do--do forgive me--if you can!"

"Forgive you!" All the wealth of Isabel's love was in the words. "Why,
darling, I have been wanting you for my own little sister ever since I
first saw you."

"Oh, have you?" Eagerly Dinah lifted her head. Her eyes were shining, her
cheeks very flushed. "Then you are pleased?" she said earnestly. "You
really are pleased?"

Isabel smiled at her very sadly, very fondly. "My darling, if you are
happy, I am more than pleased," she said.

Yet Dinah was puzzled, not wholly satisfied. She received Isabel's kiss
with a certain wistfulness. "I feel--somehow--as if I've done wrong," she
said. "Yet--yet--Scott--" she halted over the name, uttering it
shyly--"said he was--awfully pleased."

"Ah! You have told Scott!" There was a sharp, almost a wrung, sound in
Isabel's voice; but the next moment she controlled it, and spoke with
steady resolution. "Then, my dear, you needn't have any misgivings. If
you love Eustace and he loves you, it is the best thing possible for you
both." She held Dinah to her again and kissed her; then very tenderly
released her. "You must run and get ready, dear child. It is getting
late."

Dinah went obediently, still with that bewildered feeling of having
somehow taken a wrong turning. She was convinced in her own mind that the
news had not been welcome to Isabel, disguise it how she would. And
suddenly through her mind there ran the memory of those words she had
uttered a few weeks before. "Never prefer the tinsel to the true gold!"
She had not fully understood their meaning then. Now very vividly it
flashed upon her. Isabel had compared her two brothers in that brief
sentence. Isabel's estimate of the one was as low as that o