"Certainly," he said, leading her on again. "I shall make it quite clear to him that Cinderella was not to blame. Here is our sitting-room at the end of this passage!"
He stopped at the door and would have opened it, but Dinah, smitten with sudden shyness, drew back.
"Hadn't you better go in first and--and explain?" she said.
"Oh no, quite unnecessary," he said, and turned the handle.
At once a woman's voice accosted him. "For the Lord's sake, Master Stumpy, come in quick and shut the door behind ye! The racket downstairs is sending Miss Isabel nearly crazy, poor lamb. And it's meself that's wondering what we'll do to-night, for there's no peace at all in this wooden shanty of a place."
"Be quiet, Biddy!" Scott's voice made calm, undaunted answer. "You can go if you like. I've come to sit with Miss Isabel for a while. And I've brought her a visitor. Isabel, my dear, I've brought you a visitor."
Dinah moved forward in response to his gentle insistence, but her shyness went with her. She was aware of something intangible in the atmosphere that startled, that almost frightened, her.
The gaunt figure of a woman clad in a long, white robe sat at a table in the middle of the room with a sheaf of letters littered before her. Her emaciated arms were flung wide over them, her white head was bowed.
But at Scott's quiet announcement, it was raised with the suddenness of eager expectancy. For the fraction of a second Dinah saw dark, sunken eyes ablaze with a hope that was almost terrible in its intensity.
It was gone on the instant. They looked at her with a species of dull wonder. "Are you a friend of Scott's? I am very pleased to meet you," a hollow voice said.
A thin hand was extended to her, and as Dinah clasped it a sudden great pity surged through her, dispelling her doubt. Something in her responded swiftly, even passionately, to the hunger of those eyes. The moment's shock passed from her like a cloud.
"My sister Mrs. Everard," said Scott's voice at her shoulder. "Isabel, this is Miss Bathurst of whom I was telling you."
"You lent me your jewels," said Dinah, looking into the wasted face with a sympathy at her heart that was almost too poignant to be borne. "Thank you so very, very much for them! It was so very kind of you to lend them to a total stranger like me."