She hardly noticed anything further of the country through which they passed. Her agitation possessed her overwhelmingly. She felt exhausted, unnerved, very curiously ashamed. It was good to have so princely a lover, but his tempestuous wooing was altogether too much for her. She wondered how Rose, the sedate and composed beauty, would have met those wild gusts of passion. They would not have disconcerted her; nothing ever did. She would probably have endured all with a smile. No form of adoration could come amiss with her. She did not fancy that Rose's heart was capable of beating at more than the usual speed. Her very blushes savoured of a delicate complacency that enhanced her beauty without disturbing her serenity. A great wave of envy went through Dinah. "Ah, why had she not been blessed with such a temperament as that?"
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?"
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."