I hold that case? I won't touch
anything."

He put it open into her lap. "There is a chain of coral there. Perhaps
you can find it. I think it would look well with your costume."

Dinah pored over the jewels with sparkling eyes. "But are you sure--quite
sure--your sister doesn't mind?"

"Quite sure," said Scott, beginning to drape the handkerchief adroitly
over her bent head.

"How very sweet of her--of you both!" said Dinah. "I feel like Cinderella
being dressed for the ball. Oh, what lovely pearls! I never saw anything
so exquisite."

She had opened an inner case and was literally revelling in its contents.

"They were--her husband's wedding present to her," said Scott in his
rather monotonous voice.

"How lovely it must be to be married!" said Dinah, with a little sigh.

"Do you think so?" said Scott.

She turned in her chair to regard him. "Don't you?"

"I can't quite imagine it," he said.

"Oh, can't I!" said Dinah. "To have someone in love with you, wanting no
one but you, thinking there's no one else in the world like you. Have you
never dreamt that such a thing has happened? I have. And then waked up to
find everything very flat and uninteresting."

Scott was intent upon fastening an old gold brooch in the red kerchief
above her forehead. He did not meet the questioning of her bright eyes.

"No," he said. "I don't think I ever cajoled myself, either waking or
sleeping, into imagining that anybody would ever fall in love with me to
that extent."

Dinah laughed, her upturned face a-brim with merriment. "If any woman
ever wants to marry you, she'll have to do her own proposing, won't she?"
she said.

"I think she will," said Scott.

"I wish Rose de Vigne would fall in love with you then," declared Dinah.
"Men are always proposing to her, she leads them on till they make
perfect idiots of themselves. I think it's simply horrid of her to do it.
But she says she can't help being beautiful. Oh, how I wish--" Dinah
broke off.

"What do you wish?" said Scott.

She turned her face away to hide a blush. "You must think me very silly
and childish. So I am, but I'm not generally so. I think it's in the air
here. I was going to say, how I wished I could outshine her for just one
night! Isn't that piggy of me? But I am so tired of being always in the
shade. She called me 'Poor little Dinah!' only to-night. How would you
like to be called that?"

"Most people call me Stumpy," observed Scott, with his w