Then, as she rose to go, a strange thing happened. The tender strains of a waltz, _Simple Aveu_, floated softly in broken snatches in on the west wind, and again--as one who hears a voice that calls--Isabel came back. She raised herself suddenly. Her face was alight, transfigured--the face of a woman on the threshold of Love's sanctuary. "Oh, my dearest!" she said, and her voice thrilled as never Dinah had heard it thrill before. "How I have waited for this! How I have waited!" She stretched out her arms in one second of rapture unutterable; and then almost in the same moment they fell. The youth went out of her, she crumpled like a withered flower. "Biddy!" she said. "Oh, Biddy, tell them to stop! I can't bear it! I can't bear it!" Dinah went to the window and closed it, shutting out the haunting strains. That waltz meant something to her also, something with which for the moment she felt she could not cope. Turning, she saw that Isabel was clinging convulsively to the old nurse, and she was crying, crying, crying, as one who has lost all hope. "But it's too late to do her any good," mourned Biddy over the bowed head. "It's the tears of a broken heart." CHAPTER XIV THE WRATH OF THE GODS The paroxysm did not last long, and in that fact most poignantly did Dinah realize the waning strength. Dumbly she stood and watched Biddy lay the inanimate figure back upon the pillows. Isabel had sunk into a state of exhaustion that was almost torpor. "She'll sleep now, dear lamb," said Biddy, and tenderly covered her over as though she had been a child. She turned round to Dinah, looking at her with shrewd darting eyes. "Ye'd better be getting along to your lover, Miss Dinah," she said. "He'll be wanting ye to dance with him." But Dinah stood her ground with a little shiver. The bare thought of dancing at that moment made her feel physically sick. "Biddy! Biddy!" she whispered, "what has happened to make her--like this?" "And ye may well ask!" said Biddy darkly. "But it's not for me to tell ye. Ye'd best run along, Miss Dinah dear, and be happy while ye can." "But I'm not happy!" broke from Dinah. "How can I be? Biddy, what has happened? You must tell me if you can. She wasn't like this a fortnight ago. She has never been--quite like this--before." Biddy pursed her lips. "Sure, we none of us travel the same road twice, Miss Dinah," she said. But Dinah would not be satisfied with so vague an axiom. "Something has happened," she said. "Come into the next room and tell me all about it! Please, Biddy!" Biddy glanced at the bed. "She'll not hear ye in here, Miss Dinah," she said. "And what for should I be telling ye at all? Ye'll be Sir Eustace's bride in less than forty-eight hours from now, so it's maybe better ye shouldn't know." "I must know," Dinah said, and with the words a great wave of resolution went through her, uplifting her, inspiring her. "I've got to know," she said. "Whatever happens, I've got to know."