Dinah could not sleep that night. For the first time in all her healthy young life she lay awake with grim care for a bed-fellow. When in trouble she had always wept herself to sleep before, but to-night she did not weep. She lay wide-eyed, feeling hot and cold by turns as the memory of her lover's devouring passion and Biddy's sinister words alternated in her brain. What was the warning that Biddy had meant to convey? And how--oh, how--would she ever face the morrow and its fierce, prolonged courtship, from the bare thought of which every fibre of her being shrank in shamed dismay?
"There won't be any of me left by night," she told herself, as she sought to cool her burning face against the pillow. "Oh, I wish he didn't love me quite so terribly."
It was no good attempting to bridle wish or fears. They were far too insistent. She was immured in the very dungeons of Doubting Castle, and no star shone in her darkness.
Towards morning her restlessness became unendurable. She arose and tremblingly paced the room, sick with a nameless apprehension that seemed to deprive her alike of the strength to walk or to be still.
Her whole body was in a fever as though it had been scourged with thongs; in fact, she still seemed to feel the scourge, goading her on.
To and fro, to and fro, she wandered, scarcely knowing what she wanted, only urged by that unbearable restlessness that gave her no respite. Of the future ahead of her she did not definitely think. Her marriage still seemed too intangible a matter for serious contemplation. She still in her child's heart believed that marriage would make a difference. He would not make such ardent love to her when they were married. They would both have so many other things to think about. It was the present that so weighed upon her, her lover's almost appalling intensity of worship and her own utter inadequacy and futility.
Again, as often before, the question arose within her, How would Rose have met the situation? Would she have been dismayed? Would she have shrunk from those fiery kisses? Or could she--could she possibly--have remained calm and complacent and dignified in the midst of those surging tempests of love? But yet again she failed completely to picture Rose so mastered, so possessed, by any man; Rose the queen whom all men worshipped with reverence from afar. She wondered again how Sir Eustace had managed to elude the subtle charm she cast upon all about her. He had actually declared that her perfection bored him. It was evident that she left him cold. Dinah marvelled at the fact, so certain was she that had he humbled himself to ask for Rose's favour it would have been instantly and graciously accorded to him.