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.