His voice broke in upon her disjointed meditations. "Well, Daphne? Feeling better?"
She glanced at him with the confused consciousness that she dared not meet his eyes. She was glad that he was laughing, but the turbulent feeling of uncertainty that his nearness always brought to her was with her still. She was as one who had passed by a raging fire, and the scorching heat of the flame yet remained with her. Breathlessly she spoke. "I can't think--or do anything--in this wind. Are we nearly there?"
"We are there," he made answer.
And she discovered that which in her distress of mind she had failed to notice. They were running smoothly along a private avenue of fir-trees towards an old stone mansion that stood on a slope overlooking the long river valley.
She drew a hard breath. "But this is better--ever so much--than the Court!" she said.
"Your future home, my queen!" said Sir Eustace royally.
She breathed again deeply, wonderingly. "Is it real?" she said.
He laughed. "I almost think so. You see that other house right away in the distance, across that further slope? That is the Dower House where Isabel and Scott are to live when we are married."
"Oh!" There was a quick note of disappointment in Dinah's voice. "I thought they would live with us."
"I don't know why," said Sir Eustace with a touch of sharpness, and then softening almost immediately, "It's practically the same thing, my sprite of the woods. But I wish you to be mistress in your own home--when we do settle down, which won't be at present. For we're not coming back from our honeymoon till you have learnt that I am the only person in the world that matters."
Again a slight shiver caught Dinah, but she repressed it instantly. "I expect it won't take me very long to learn that, Apollo," she said, with her shy, fleeting smile.
And then they glided up to the wide steps of his home and the door opened to receive them, showing Scott--Scott her friend--standing in the opening, awaiting her.