He paused. Dinah's eyes had flashed up to his, green, eager, intensely alive, and behind those eyes her soul seemed to be straining like a thing in leash. "Oh, I knew he had cared for someone," she breathed, "But it couldn't--it couldn't have been me!"
"Yes," Sir Eustace said slowly. "You and none other. You wonder if it's true--how I know. He's an awful ass, as I said before, one of the few supreme fools who never think of themselves. I knew that he was caught all right ages back in Switzerland, and--being a low hound of mean instincts--I set to work to cut him out."
"Oh!" murmured Dinah. "That was just what I did with Rose de Vigne."
His mouth twisted a little. "It's a funny world, Dinah," he said. "Our little game has cost us both something. I got too near the candle myself, and the scorch was pretty sharp while it lasted. Well, to get back to my story. Scott saw that I was beginning to give you indigestion, and--being as I mentioned before several sorts of a fool--he tackled me upon the subject and swore that if I didn't put an end to the game, he would put you on your guard against me, tell you in fact the precise species of rotter that I chanced to be. I was naturally annoyed by his interference. Anyone would have been. I gave him the kicking he deserved. That was low of me, wasn't it?" as she made a quick movement of shrinking. "You won't forgive me for that, or for what came after. The very next day--to spite the little beast--I proposed to you."
Dinah's eyes were fiercely bright. "I wish I'd known!" she said.
"I wish to heaven you had, my dear," Eustace spoke with a grim hint of humour. "It would have saved us both a good deal of unnecessary trouble and humiliation. However, Scott was too big a fool to tell you. There is a martyrlike sort of cussedness about him that is several degrees worse than any pride. So he let things be, still cheating himself into the belief that the arrangement was for your happiness, till, as you are aware, it turned out so manifestly otherwise that he found himself obliged once more to come to the rescue of his lady love. But his exasperating humility was such that he never suspected the real reason for your change of mind, and when I accused him of cutting me out, he was as scandalized as only a righteous man knows how to be. You can't do much with a fellow like that, you know,--a fool who won't believe the evidence of his own senses. Besides, it was not for me to enlighten him, particularly as you didn't want him to know the real state of things just then. So I left him alone. The next day--only the next day, mind you--the silent knight opened his heart; to whom, do you think? You'll be horribly furious when I tell you."