and rising with the words rather abruptly he left her.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE LIGHTS OF A CITY


"May I come in?" said Sir Eustace.

He stood in the doorway, a gigantic figure to Dinah's unaccustomed eyes,
and looked in upon her with a careless smile on his handsome face.

"Oh, please do!" she said.

She was lying on a couch under a purple rug belonging to Isabel. Very
fragile and weak she looked, but her face was flushed and eager, her eyes
alight with welcome. She thought he had never looked so splendid, so
godlike, as at that moment. She wanted to hold out both her arms to him
and be borne upward to Olympus in his embrace.

He came forward with his easy carriage and stood beside her. His smile
was one of kindly indulgence. He looked down at her as he might have
looked upon an infant.

An uneasy sense of her own insignificance went through Dinah. She could
not remember that he had ever regarded her thus before. A faint, faint
throb of resentment also pulsed through her. His attitude was so