le. Urged by that imperative, inner
prompting she turned and fled, not pausing for a moment's thought.

The glass door closed behind her. She burst impetuously into the deserted
ballroom. And here, on the point of entering the small recess from which
she was escaping, she came suddenly face to face with Scott.

So headlong was her flight that she actually ran into him. He put out a
steadying hand.

"I was just coming to look for you," he said in his quiet, composed
fashion.

She stopped unwillingly. "Oh, were you? How kind! I--I think I ought to
go up now. It's getting late, isn't it? Good-night!"

He did not seek to detain her. She wondered with a burning sense of shame
what he could have thought of her wild rush. But she was too agitated to
attempt any excuse, too agitated to check her retreat. Without a backward
glance she hastened away like Cinderella overtaken by fate; the spell was
broken, the glamour gone.

CHAPTER VIII

MR. GREATHEART

It was a very meek and subdued Dinah who made her appearance in the
_salle-a-manger_ on the following morning.

She and Billy were generally in the best of spirits, and the room usually
rang with their young laughter. But that morning even Billy was
decorously quiet, and his sister scarcely spoke or raised her eyes.

Colonel de Vigne, white-moustached and martial, sat at the table with
them, but neither Lady Grace nor Rose was present. The Colonel's face was
stern. He occupied himself with letters with scarcely so much as a glance
for the boy and girl on either side of him.

There was a letter by Dinah's plate also, but she had not opened it. Her
downcast face was very pale. She ate but little, and that little only
when urged thereto by Billy, whose appetite was rampant notwithstanding
the decorum of his behaviour.

Scott, breakfasting with his brother at a table only a few yards distant,
observed the trio with unobtrusive interest.

He had made acquaintance with the Colonel on the previous evening, and
after a time the latter caught his eye and threw him a brief greeting.
Most people were polite to Scott. But the Colonel's whole aspect was
forbidding that morning, and his courtesy went no further.

Sir Eustace did not display the smallest interest in anyone. His black
brows were drawn, and he looked even more haughtily unapproachable than
the Colonel.

He conversed with his brother in low tones on the subject of the
morning's mail which lay at Scott's e