Billy gave her a push. "Go on! They're calling you."
And Dinah found the strange sad eyes upon her, alight with a smile of welcome. She went forward impetuously, and in a moment Isabel's cold hands were clasped upon her warm ones.
"I have been waiting for you, dear child," the low voice said. "What have you been doing?"
Dinah suddenly felt as if she were standing in the presence of a princess. Isabel in public bore herself with a haughtiness fully equal to that displayed by Sir Eustace, and she knew that Lady Grace was impressed by it.
"I would have come back sooner if I had known," she said, closely holding the long, slender fingers.
"My dear, you are woefully untidy now you have come," murmured Lady Grace.
But Isabel gently freed one hand to put her arm about the girl. "To me she is--just right," she said, and in her voice there sounded the music of a great tenderness. "Youth is never tidy, Lady Grace; but there is nothing in the world like it."
Lady Grace's eyes went to her daughter whose faultless apparel and perfection of line were in vivid contrast to Dinah's harum-scarum appearance.
"I do not altogether agree with you in that respect, Mrs. Everard," she said, with a smile. "I think young girls should always aim at being presentable. But I quite admit that it is more difficult for some than for others. Dinah, my dear, Mrs. Everard has been kind enough to ask you to lunch in her sitting-room with her, and to go for a sleigh-drive afterward; so you had better run and get respectable as quickly as you can."
"Oh, how kind you are!" Dinah said, with earnest eyes uplifted. "You know how I shall love to come, don't you?"
"I thought you might, dear," Isabel said. "Scott is coming to keep us company. He has arranged for a sleigh to be here in an hour. We are going for a twelve-mile round, so we must not be late starting. It gets so cold after sundown."
"I had better go then, hadn't I?" said Dinah.
"I am coming too," Isabel said. Her arm was still about her. It remained so as she turned to go. "Good-bye, Lady Grace! I will take great care of the child. Thank you for allowing her to come."
She bowed with regal graciousness and moved away, taking Dinah with her.
"Exit Purple Empress!" murmured a man in the background close to Rose. "Who on earth is she? I haven't seen her anywhere before."