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Rich Man, Poor Man

by Maximilian Foster · English · Gutenberg #46945 · 350,590 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Rich Man, Poor Man

Author: Maximilian Foster

Illustrator: Frederic Rodrigo Gruger


        
Release date: September 23, 2014 [eBook #46945]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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RICH MAN, POOR MAN


[Illustration: "'Not just a cousin, Bab! Not that--can't you see!'"
                                                           PAGE 172]


RICH MAN, POOR MAN

by

MAXIMILIAN FOSTER

Author of "The Whistling Man," "Keeping Up Appearances," etc.

Illustrated by F. R. Gruger







D. Appleton and Company
New York London
1916

Copyright, 1916, by
D. Appleton and Company

Copyright, 1915, by the Curtis Publishing Company

Printed in the United States of America




CONTENTS

     CHAPTER                     PAGE

          I.                        1

          II.                      11

         III.                      26

          IV.                      41

           V.                      49

          VI.                      59

         VII.                      72

        VIII.                      93

          IX.                     105

           X.                     113

          XI.                     122

         XII.                     139

        XIII.                     157

         XIV.                     164

          XV.                     176

         XVI.                     191

        XVII.                     207

       XVIII.                     215

         XIX.                     227

          XX.                     245

         XXI.                     257

        XXII.                     275

       XXIII.                     290

        XXIV.                     299

         XXV.                     310

        XXVI.                     319




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  "'Not just a cousin, Bab! Not that--can't you see!'"
                                                 _Frontispiece_

                                                     FACING PAGE

  "'Do you know, I've never been at a dance!'"                18

  "One thought stood out ... she had lost Varick."           220

  "'It's you he wants and you he's going to have!'"          288




RICH MAN, POOR MAN




I


Promptly at six every week-day evening in the year Mr. Mapleson came
down the stairs of the L road station on the corner and trudged up
the side street toward his home. He lived at Mrs. Tilney's, the
last house but one in the block; but though for more than sixteen
years Mr. Mapleson had boarded there, none of the landlady's other
patrons--or the landlady either, for that matter--knew much about
their fellow-guest. Frankly he was a good deal of a puzzle. The others
thought him queer in his ways besides. They were right perhaps.

He was a little man, round-shouldered, elderly and spare, with an air
of alert, bustling energy quite birdlike in its abruptness. Uppish
you might have judged him, and self-important too; yet in his tired
eyes as well as in the droop of his small sensitive mouth there was
something that belied the vanity of a pompous, confident man. Nor
was his briskness so very convincing, once you had closely scanned
him, for beneath it all was a secret, furtive nervousness that
bordered at times on the panicky. He was, in short, shy--shy to a last
degree; a self-conscious, timorous man that on every occasion shrank
mistrustfully from the busy world about him. A castaway marooned on
a desert island could scarcely have been more solitary, only in Mr.
Mapleson's case, of course, the solitude was New York.

There are many such. No quarter of the city, indeed, is without its
Mr. Maplesons. They are to be seen caged behind the grilles of every
bank and counting-room; they infest, as well, the hivelike offices of
the big insurance companies; soft-footed, faithful, meek, they burrow
dustily among the musty, dusty back rooms and libraries of the law.
Mere cogs in the machine, their reward is existence, nothing else. Then
when the cog is broken, its usefulness at an end, it is cast carelessly
on the scrapheap, while the machine goes grinding on. _O tempore! O
mores!_ Mr. Mapleson was a clerk in a Pine Street real-estate office.
His salary was twenty-eight dollars a week, and his employers thought
it high!

But enough! Tonight it was Christmas Eve; and as Mr. Mapleson descended
from the L road station and trudged westward on his way, a smile
as secret, as furtive as himself, quivered radiantly on his lips.
Overhead, through a rift in the fleecy, racing clouds, a host of stars
blazed down like the lights of an anchored argosy; and when he looked
up and saw them there the little man's eyes blinked and twinkled back
at them. Then a gust of the night's raw wind swooped along the street,
and he had bent his head to it and was hurrying when a fleck of snow
like a knife-point stung him on the cheek. "Hah!" cried Mr. Mapleson,
his face beaming, "a white Christmas, eh?" And with a quick look
upward, as if to assure himself, he critically examined the sky.

Afterward he chuckled, a silvery tinkle, and tightly clutching the
bundles in his arms Mr. Mapleson hurried on, his slender feet padding
the pavement like a bunny cottontail's. A little agitated you would
have thought him, a little feverish perhaps; and yet, after all, why
not? Remember, Christmas comes but once a year; and as the slight
figure passed swiftly under a street lamp standing near his door,
there was a glow in the gray furrowed face that one would have wagered
sprang from a heart filled only with kindliness, with the night's
spirit of goodwill.

Still smiling, Mr. Mapleson opened the door with his latchkey and
stepped into Mrs. Tilney's hall. Then a curious thing occurred. Closing
the door, Mr. Mapleson for a moment stood poised in an attitude of
acute attention. It was not only furtive, it was a little crafty too.
Then his eyes, roaming about him, fled down the dingy hall to where in
the dim light of the single gas jet a stair was to be seen, Obviously
it led to the kitchen floor below, for there arose from it not only a
potent scent of cooking but the sound of a shrill, flustered voice,
a woman's. Evidently its owner reigned in an advisory capacity over
the kitchen's busy doings. At any rate, the voice lifting itself in
shriller complaint, the words became intelligible.

"Is everything on earth going to ruin? Mary Mangin, don't you hear me?
Do as I tell you now!"

"I'm a-doin' ut, ain't I?" an aggrieved voice returned.

Then came an interlude. The kitchen door was slammed, while from
elsewhere belowstairs arose yet a third voice, a girl's.

She sang, lilting like a lark:

  One shoe off and one shoe on,
  Deedle deedle dumpling, my son John.

That was all. It ended in a little laugh, a burst of merriment that
rippled musically up the stairwell.

Mr. Mapleson abruptly moved. Tiptoeing to the stairhead he descended
stealthily halfway to the foot. Here he turned, and laying down his
parcels on a stair he removed his hat, which he placed on top of them.
Afterward the little man hurriedly unbuttoned his coat, removing from
the recesses of its inner pocket a newspaper. This he opened in the
middle. Then with a painstaking precision, scrupulous with care, Mr.
Mapleson compactly folded the newspaper so as to display one particular
column among its advertisements.

Its heading, a single word printed in full-faced type, was significant.

  PERSONAL

When he had replaced the paper in his pocket Mr. Mapleson picked up his
hat and bundles and on tiptoe crept down the remainder of the stairs. A
board partition inclosed the stairway, and on reaching the bottom the
little man peered cautiously past the woodwork. The glance revealed to
him Mrs. Tilney's dining-room, its lights lighted, its table set for
dinner. In a few minutes now the bell would ring, the dozen guests come
trooping to their meal. However, as if assured the room was vacant, Mr.
Mapleson was just creeping into the basement hall when with a catch of
his breath he shrank back suddenly.

On the hearthrug in front of the fireplace stood a girl. She was a
young girl. In age she was nineteen perhaps, or it may have been a
little more. But whatever her age, or whether you would or would not
call her beautiful, there was one thing about her that was not to be
mistaken. It was the allurement of her smile, a merriment that danced
and rippled in her eyes like the sheen on sunlit silk. At the moment
it happened that a young man in evening clothes stood before her,
and with her arms uplifted, her slender form close to his, the girl
was intently tying his necktie. All her attention was centered on the
task as with deft fingers she molded the white lawn into a bow; but
with the young man it was different. His face, so far from wearing the
vacuous, bored expression seen on the faces of those who must have
their neckties tied, seemed interested to an extreme. With parted lips,
his eyes smiling, he was gazing down at the face now so near to his.

Mr. Mapleson peeped. Presently he saw the girl's quick slender fingers
twist the tie into a bow, then give it a finishing pat; and as if yet
fearful he should be seen, he was effacing himself, when the young man
moved and he heard him draw a little breath.

"Thanks," said the young man briefly.

The girl's eyes leisurely lifted themselves. Briefly they dwelt on his,
then their gray depths lighted suddenly. A moment later a tinkling
ripple of merriment left her and she turned away.

"You're welcome!" she laughed; and she and the young man moving out of
view, Mr. Mapleson made the best of his opportunity.

Gliding down the hallway, he quietly opened the door at the other
end. Then, stepping inside, he as quietly closed it behind him. He
was in Mrs. Tilney's kitchen, a sanctuary tabooed usually to Mrs.
Tilney's guests. Across the floor the lady herself stood near the range
shrilly exhorting her cook, a red-faced person of astonishing girth
and--notably--impenetrable calmness.

"Mary Mangin, my Gawd!" Mrs. Tilney addressed her; "d'you wish to be
the death of me? Enough's happening without your burning the soup! Take
off that kettle at once, d'you hear me?"

Quaking as she moved, the behemoth emerged momentarily out of the
vapors surrounding the cookstove.

"Be aisy, will ye!" admonished Mary Mangin. "What wit' y'r carryin' ons
th' day 'twill be a wonder we're not worse an' all!"

It was at this moment that Mr. Mapleson spoke.

"Mrs. Tilney," he said.

The landlady turned. She was a small woman with sharp, inquiring
features and shrewd, not unkindly eyes. Now, having peered at Mr.
Mapleson from behind her steel-rimmed spectacles, Mrs. Tilney began
to blink exactly like a small, startled barn owl. Obviously she had
suddenly become agitated.

"Well?" she breathed.

Laying down his bundles, Mr. Mapleson removed his hat, after which he
produced from his pocket the folded newspaper. Silently he pointed to
the column headed "Personal," and as silently Mrs. Tilney read:

 BENEDICT. A liberal reward will be paid for information concerning the
 present whereabouts, living or dead, of the person known variously as
 Randolph Benedict, Benedict Ames, or Ames Randolph, who, when last heard
 of in January, 1897, was about to embark from New York City presumably
 for some port in South America. All communications will be regarded
 as entirely confidential. Address Hill, Hamilton, Durand & Hill, Wall
 Street, New York.

A little gasp escaped Mrs. Tilney. She was still gaping at the paper
when Mr. Mapleson took it from her and, turning the page, indicated a
new item in another column:

  =BEESTON'S CONDITION CRITICAL=
  =FAMILY SUMMONED TO THE=
  =GREAT FINANCIER'S=
  =BEDSIDE=

There was a pause. Then with a jerk of his thumb Mr. Mapleson indicated
the adjoining dining-room where again the girl's voice arose, tinkling
with merriment.

"All hers," he said, and as he spoke his voice cracked
thinly--"millions!"

Again Mrs. Tilney caught swiftly at her breath.

"Bab's?" she whispered. "My little Babbie Wynne?"

Mr. Mapleson slowly nodded.

"It's true," he said; "I phoned them, and it's as true as the Holy
Writ! The lawyers are coming here at eight!"




II


Six o'clock had just struck when Bab, after a brief look at herself
in the glass, opened the door of her bedroom and hurried out into the
hall. Every evening it was her duty to see that the dining-room table
was set properly and tonight she had been delayed. In spite of her
hurry, however, her pace perceptibly slackened as she neared the head
of the stairs. The room there was Mr. Varick's; and behind the door she
could hear him briskly moving about, humming to himself a lively little
air as he dressed:

  La Donna è mobile,
  Quam plume mal vento!

She smiled at his cheerfulness. How pleasant it always was to hear him!

Frankly Bab's interest in the young man was a bit deeper than the
feeling she usually displayed toward the boarders at Mrs. Tilney's.
The house, though comfortable enough in its homely way, was still not
what one would call enlivening; nor were its patrons any the more
inspiriting. They were, for the most part, clerks, breadwinners like
Mr. Mapleson, with an occasional stenographer or saleswoman to lend
variety. To these, however, Varick had proved the exception--notably
so, in fact; and this Bab had been quick to see.

One ordinarily does not look to find a Varick in a boarding house.
Indeed, until the day he arrived at Mrs. Tilney's Varick had never so
much as put his nose in one. He was, in short, what Miss Hultz, the
occupant of Mrs. Tilney's third-floor front, so aptly termed a "swell."
And when she said swell Miss Hultz meant swell; there was no doubt of
that. Being in the hat and feather department at Bimberg's--the Fifth
Avenue Bim's of course--she consequently knew.

But then that Varick was a Varick, therefore of the elect, would
probably have been evident even without Miss Hultz' authoritative
say-so.

He was a slender, tall, gray-eyed fellow with a narrow, high-bred head
and quiet, pleasant manners. Newcomers were not many at Mrs. Tilney's,
for the house, if modest, was well kept, so that its guests remained
on indefinitely. However, the instant Varick for the first time had
entered its dining-room he was looked at with interest, the others
divining immediately that he was a somebody. Moreover, Mr. Jessup, the
gentleman at the head of the table, instantly had confirmed this.

With his wife, a plump, kindly little woman, Mr. Jessup tenanted Mrs.
Tilney's second-floor back. Briefly he was a bookkeeper in the National
Guaranty's R to Z Department; and looking up from his soup as Varick
entered, Mr. Jessup had stared.

"Phew!" he'd whistled, whereat Mrs. J. had nudged him with her elbow.
"Don't blow in your soup, Joe!" she'd admonished; "it isn't manners!"

A lot he cared! Months before, when Varick's father had died, Jessup
had been called in to help untangle the old man's bank accounts. That
they had been as involved as all this, though, he had not even dreamed.
A Varick in a boarding house! Again Mr. Jessup had whistled. However,
not even this vicissitude seemed to have crushed the young man. A quick
smile lit up his face when the bookkeeper ventured to address him.

"Of course I remember you!" he exclaimed. Then he had turned to the
bookkeeper's chubby lady in the same frank, friendly way. "Delighted
to meet you, Mrs. Jessup!"

Thus it was that, impressed, a little awed perhaps, Mrs. Tilney's other
guests learned they had a Varick among them. Not that Varick had tried
either to awe or to impress. Like Jessup, he too was merely an employee
in a bank now, and he made no bones of saying so. The bank was the
Borough National. It was in Broad Street and it paid him twelve dollars
a week. That was another reason why Varick was at Mrs. Tilney's.

But not even this--the fact, that is, of the twelve dollars and its
contingent relation to his presence in the boarding house--seemed in
the least to have marred his cheerfulness. Bab felt heartily she had
never met anyone so responsive, so entertaining. As she went on down
the stairs, hurrying to her task in the dining-room, she was still
smiling, humming softly to herself the while the air she had heard him
singing.

A few minutes later, while she was arranging the last knives and forks,
the dining-room door opened and Varick himself stood there. His face
lit instantly as he saw her.

"Hello, Bab!" he greeted. "I thought I heard you come down!"

He was in evening dress, his attire spick and span save for the one
particular of his necktie. This, with its two ends askew, clung to his
collar in a rumpled knot.

"Busy?" he inquired.

Bab laughed.

"You want your tie tied, I suppose!" she returned, warned by former
experience. "I thought the last time I gave you a lesson!"

Varick nodded.

"I know. What I need, though, is not lessons--it's less thumbs. Now be
a good fellow, won't you?"

Bab laughed again; and laying down the knives and forks in her hands,
she reached up and began pulling and patting the soft lawn into shape.
Finally she had it to her satisfaction.

"There!" she murmured.

Varick did not move away. Instead he stood looking down at her, his
gray eyes dwelling on hers, and in them was a gleam of interest she
had seen there more than once of late. It was as if recently Varick
had found in her face something he had not found there before. That
something, too, seemed to inspire in him a growing look of reflection.

Bab, in spite of her good looks, was not vain. At the same time,
though, neither was she blind. She gazed at Varick curiously.

"Well?" she inquired presently.

Varick seemed suddenly to recollect.

"Thanks!" he said; and in turn she laughed back: "You're welcome!"

She had just spoken when out in the dimly lighted hall Bab saw Mr.
Mapleson emerge suddenly from the stairway, and on stealthy tiptoes
dart out of view toward the kitchen. A muffled exclamation escaped her,
and as he heard it Varick looked at her vaguely.

"I beg pardon?" he inquired.

"Nothing--it was just someone in the hall," Bab evasively answered;
and her face thoughtful now, she finished arranging the table. Planted
on the hearthrug, Varick watched her. However, though she was quite
conscious of this, she gave little heed to it. Her brow puckered itself
still more in thought.

"You're not going to be home tonight, are you?" she inquired presently.
When Varick said no, that he'd be out all the evening, Bab perched
herself on the serving table in the corner, and sat swinging her
shapely, slender heels. "I suppose you're going to a party, aren't
you?" she suggested.

Again he smiled.

"Why, yes, Bab--why?"

"Oh, I don't know," she murmured as aimlessly. Then her eyes growing
vague, she drew a little breath.

"There'll be a tree, I suppose?" Varick nodded. Yes, there would be
a tree. "And you'll dance besides, I shouldn't wonder?" added Bab,
drawing in her breath again, a pensive sigh. "I imagine, too, there'll
be a lot of girls there--pretty girls?"

She could see him stare, curious at her tone, her questioning; but now
she hardly cared. There was something Bab meant to ask him presently,
though how she was to do it she still was not quite sure.

"Funny," she murmured, her tone as if she mused; "do you know, I've
never been at a dance!"

Varick stared anew. "Really?"

"Honor bright!" said Bab, aware of his astonishment. She had a way,
when others amused her, of drolly twisting up one corner of her mouth;
and then as her smile broadened, rippling over her face, Bab's small
nose would wrinkle up like a rabbit's, obscuring temporarily the
freckles on each side of it. "Give you my word!" she avowed.

Leaning back, then, she sat clicking her heels together, her eyes
roving toward the ceiling.

"Don't laugh," she murmured; "but often I've wondered what a dance was
like--a real dance, I mean. You see, ever since I was a kid everyone
round me has been too busy or too tired to think of things like that.
Sometimes they've been too worried too; so the only dances I've ever
been at have been just dream dances--make-believes. You know how it
is, don't you, when you have no other children to play with? I'd make
believe I was in a huge ballroom, all alone, and then somewhere music
would begin to play! Oh, I can hear it yet--Strauss, the Blue Danube!"
Bab's look was misty, rapt; and then with a slender hand upraised she
began to beat time to the sensuous measure of the melody drifting in
her mind. "Lights, music, that huge ballroom," she laughed at the
memory; "music, the Blue Danube. Yes--and then I'd dance all alone, all
by myself! Can't you see me--me in my pigtails and pinafore, dancing!
Funny, wasn't it?"

[Illustration: "'Do you know, I've never been at a dance!'"]

"Funny?" repeated Varick, and she saw his face was grave. "I don't
think so. Why?"

But Bab did not heed. Her face rapt, she still sat smiling at the
ceiling.

Strangers often wondered about Bab. It was not only her face, however,
that roused, that held their interest. They marveled, too, that in
the dim and dingy surroundings of the boarding house the landlady's
little ward had acquired an air, a manner so manifestly above her
surroundings. But Bab's history, vague as it was, gave a hint of the
reason. Her mother, a woman who had died years before at Mrs. Tilney's,
leaving her child in Mrs. Tilney's hands, manifestly had been a woman
of refinement. In other words, despite environment Bab's blood had
told; and that it had was evidenced by Varick's interest in her. During
his months at Mrs. Tilney's he had, in fact, managed to see a good deal
of his landlady's pretty ward.

However, not even this interest, the pleasure he had found in her
company, had obscured in the least Bab's perception of the facts. She
knew thoroughly her own position. She knew, too, his--that and the gulf
it put between them. Young, attractive, a man; the fact that he now
was poor had not much altered his social standing. It would remain as
it was, too, until he married. Then when he did, his position would be
rated by the wealth--that or the lack of it--of the woman who became
his wife.

So, though Varick single might exist with propriety in a boarding
house, there was a vast difference between that and a Varick married--a
Varick setting up for life, say, in a four-room Harlem flat. And Bab,
too, don't forget, was a boarding-house keeper's nameless ward.

"Tell me something," she said.

Slipping from her perch, she drew up a chair and, seating herself, bent
forward with her chin on her hands.

"You've heard of the Beestons, haven't you--that family uptown. By any
chance do you know them?"

"The Beestons!"

She saw him frown, his air amazed. However, though she wondered at the
moment at his air, her interest was entirely in what he would answer.

"Why do you ask?" he inquired.

"I wanted to know," Bab returned slowly. "I wanted to find out
something. Do they ever give parties--dances like the one you're going
to tonight? And do you ever go to them?"

Varick's look grew all the more amazed. He not only knew the Beestons,
he had often been in the huge house they occupied in one of the uptown
side streets off the Avenue. But though that was true, for some reason
the fact did not seem to afford him any great satisfaction. His face
suddenly had grown hard.

"Who told you about them?" he demanded.

Bab smiled vaguely.

"There's a boy, isn't there?" she parried. "Old Mr. Beeston's grandson?"

The look of wonder in his face grew.

"Who? David Lloyd, you mean? How did you know him?" he questioned.

"I don't," said Bab, smiling at his vehemence; "I've only heard about
him. He's a cripple, isn't he--a hopeless cripple?"

It proved that all his life Varick had known the boy--the man
rather--whom she meant.

"Look here, Bab," he directed, puzzled, "why do you ask me about those
people? I'd like to know that! Will you tell me?"

She deliberated for a moment.

"It was something I heard," she said then, hesitating.

"Here? In this house?" he questioned, all the more amazed; and Bab
nodded.

"I heard Mr. Mapy say it," she returned.

Varick in return gazed at her, his face a picture.

"Mr. Mapy," he knew, meant Mr. Mapleson. He knew, too, like the other
boarders, Bab's interest in the quaint, gray-faced little man, his
next-door neighbor upstairs. True, Bab often laughed blithely at Mr.
Mapleson, teasing him endlessly for his idiosyncrasies; but otherwise,
as also Varick knew, her heart held for the queer, curious little man
a deep well of tenderness, of love and gentle understanding. However,
that was not the point. What had Mapleson to do with David Lloyd?
What had a musty, antiquated Pine Street clerk to do with any of the
Beestons? Now that he thought of it, there was something else, too,
that Varick would have liked to know.

For the past ten days--for a fortnight, in fact--he had felt
indefinably that something queer was going on in that room next to his.
Night after night, long after Mrs. Tilney's other guests had sought
their rest, he had heard Mr. Mapleson softly stirring about. Again and
again, too, he could hear him whispering, mumbling to himself. What is
more, Varick was not the only one who had been disturbed. A few nights
before, quite late, too, he heard a hand rap abruptly at Mr. Mapleson's
door. Startled, a moment later he had heard someone speak. It was
Jessup!

"Mapleson," Jessup had demanded; "what are you up to, man?"

Varick had not caught the reply; for, after a startled exclamation,
Mr. Mapleson had dropped his voice to a whisper. But Varick had heard
enough. What, indeed, was Mr. Mapleson up to?

Bab's eyes grew vague. Then she laughed. The laugh, though, was a
little strained, a little less free than usual. Then her eyes fell and
a faint tide of color crept up into her face and neck.

"Honest Injun now," she again laughed awkwardly, "don't you know what's
happening?"

Varick shook his head, and Bab, her eyes on his, bit her lip
reflectively. That question she longed to ask him hovered on her lips
now, and with it there had come into her face an air of wistfulness.
Her blue eyes clouded faintly.

"Tell me," she said, and hesitated--"tell me something. If at the dance
tonight--the dance you're going to--if--if things were changed; and
I--you----"

Varick nodded quietly.

"Yes," he prompted, "if I----"

"If I were there," said Bab; "if things were changed and I----"

Again she paused. Her eyes, too, fell suddenly. Then she caught her lip
between her teeth.

"Yes, Bab," encouraged Varick; "if what were changed?"

But Bab did not reply. Of a sudden, as she raised her eyes to his, a
great wave of color rushed into her face, mantling her to the eyes. Of
a sudden, too, the eyes fell, dropping before his look. Her confusion
was furious and with an abrupt movement, swift and unexpected to him,
she slipped from her chair and darted into the half-lit hall. Then the
next instant she was gone, and Varick, his own face a study, stood
gazing after her dumbfounded.

"Good Lord!" he murmured to himself.

For he was no fool, neither was he a coxcomb; and what Bab had let him
read in her face had been a revelation.




III


Meanwhile, her cheeks aflame, furiously self-conscious at what she had
revealed, Barbara Wynne had gone flying up the stairway to her room.
There, half an hour later, tapping softly at her door, Mr. Mapleson
found her lying in the dark, her face buried among the pillows of her
bed.

"Why, Babbie!" he whispered--"Babbie Wynne!"

The boarders at Mrs. Tilney's, and especially those who had heard the
story of Barbara Wynne, often commented on Mr. Mapleson's devotion to
the landlady's little ward. The fact is the two had long lived together
in the boarding house; for the year that Mr. Mapleson came to Mrs.
Tilney's was the year Barbara Wynne had come there too. However, that
was but a coincidence. They were in no way related. Mr. Mapleson, it
seemed, had come first.

That night, now nearly seventeen years ago, nine o'clock had just
struck when Mrs. Tilney's doorbell sounded. As the day happened to be
a Sunday, and therefore the upstairs girl's evening out, Mrs. Tilney
herself had answered.

The night was withering. It was the evening of an August dog day,
ghastly betwixt the horrors of its heat and its stagnant, glaring
sunshine, yet the man she found in the vestibule was clad in a winter
suit not only sizes too large for him but suffocating in its armorlike
thickness. Dust powdered him from head to foot. It powdered also the
cheap suitcase he had set down beside him.

"Well?" Mrs. Tilney had inquired sharply.

A perfect convulsion of embarrassment had for a moment kept the slight,
pallid man from replying. "I--why, your sign outside," he'd faltered
then; "if you could let me have a room."

"You have references?" Mrs. Tilney had demanded.

The little man shook his head. Mrs. Tilney was about to shut the door
when abruptly he threw out both his hands. The gesture was as timid as
a girl's.

"I am from the country," he appealed. "I've come a great ways. I am
very tired."

Then he smiled up at her, and somehow, in the wan wistfulness of his
look, the sharp, distrustful woman had been placated.

"Oh, well," she grumbled and, standing aside, she waved for him to
enter.

It had taken Mrs. Tilney weeks, not to say months, to grasp the real
nature of her queer, retiring guest. Summer went, the autumn drew on.
A new flock of winter "steadies" replaced summer's birds of passage
and she wondered when he, too, would be gone. But Mr. Mapleson showed
no disposition to depart. There were, in fact, signs that he meant to
remain indefinitely. At any rate, on entering his room one morning
Mrs. Tilney found upon the wall three cheap little color prints, each
neatly framed in fumed oak. Also in a cigar box and tomato can on the
window sill Mr. Mapleson had laid out for himself the beginnings of a
window garden. A geranium and a Chinese bulb composed the horticultural
display.

However, it was not until Thanksgiving Day, some weeks later, that
Mrs. Tilney's suspicions of her guest were effectively set at rest.
The circumstance arose over the departure, somewhat abrupt, of one of
the other boarders, a Mr. Agramonte. The gentleman, the manager of a
vaudeville booking agency, having let his board bill run three weeks,
decamped secretly in the middle of the night. This was the day before
Thanksgiving. At noon then, the fête day in question, Mr. Mapleson
appeared suddenly at Mrs. Tilney's kitchen door. In his arms he bore a
small potted plant. The plant was in full bloom and Mr. Mapleson was
beaming shyly.

"I have brought you a flower," he said.

"Me?" had gasped Mrs. Tilney.

"Yes, it's a begonia," Mr. Mapleson was saying, when to his wonder, his
alarm as well, Mrs. Tilney emitted a laugh, or rather it was a croak,
then burst abruptly into tears, the first in years.

Never, never before, as she protested, had one of her boarders shown
her such consideration. At the thought Mrs. Tilney wept anew.

However, to proceed: It was exactly one month after this that Barbara
Wynne, the ward of Mrs. Tilney, had come there to the boarding
house. The day, like the day of Mr. Mapleson's advent, was one to be
remembered. A raw wind from the eastward had risen with the morning,
and well on in the afternoon rain began. Presently, as if to show what
a December storm really can do in New York, it settled itself into a
soaking downpour--a flood that changed before long to cutting sleet,
then to a wet, clinging snow.

Toward night Mrs. Tilney's upstairs girl entered the kitchen where Mrs.
Tilney waged diurnal warfare with her cook.

"There's a lady in the parlor, mum," she announced.

The term was too often vulgarly misused in Mrs. Tilney's cosmos to
excite anticipation.

"A lady? How do you know?" demanded Mrs. Tilney.

"Sure, mum," replied the girl with convincing frankness, "she do look
different f'm yer boarders!"

It proved, moreover, to be the truth. Upstairs in the parlor Mrs.
Tilney found a slender, wan-faced woman to whose dripping skirts clung
an equally rain-soaked child; and that they were persons of distinction
not even their appearance could dispute. The visitor's voice, when she
spoke, was low and modulated. It rang like the undertone of a bell.

"I am looking for rooms--a room," she corrected.

A shudder accompanied the words, and with a gesture of uncontrollable
languor she held her hands to the coal glowing in the hearth.

The landlady debated. Transients of this sort were as little to her
liking as they were rare. However, after some misgivings she showed her
visitor the one vacancy. It was a top-floor bedroom just down the hall
from Mr. Mapleson's. Board included, the rent would be sixteen dollars.

"Thanks," said the visitor. "I'll have my trunk sent in at once."

Her tone Mrs. Tilney had thought hasty, over-eager. Before the
landlady, however, could utter that shibboleth of her calling, "You
have references?" the child spoke. Clinging to her mother's skirts, she
had been staring at Mrs. Tilney.

"Babbie Wynne's hungry," she said.

With a start and a swift contraction of her mouth the mother leaned
down to her.

"Hush! Yes, dear, in just a little while now!"

Mrs. Tilney did not ask to have her pay in advance. A certitude,
subconscious but still confident, told her the visitor hadn't it. And
to have turned that woman and her child outdoors on a night like this
needed more courage than Mrs. Tilney had.

"Can we stay, mother?" asked the child earnestly.

There Mrs. Tilney had grimly interposed.

"You're married, aren't you?" she demanded, with a directness as
designed as it was blunt.

A startled look leaped into the visitor's eyes. Then with a quiet
dignity she slipped off her glove, displaying on her finger a narrow
gold band.

"I am a widow," she said.

Mrs. Tilney had asked no more.

"While you get your trunk," she directed, "you leave that child with
me. Tonight's no night for her to be traipsing the street! I'll see she
has her supper too. What's she eat?"

And there you are! Barbara Wynne had come to Mrs. Tilney's!

There's not much more to be told. At seven the mother returned. Then,
sometime later, an express wagon left a trunk at Mrs. Tilney's door.
That night Mrs. Wynne came down to her dinner; but after that, of Mrs.
Tilney's guests none but Mr. Mapleson saw her ever again. Late the
second night the little man pattered down the stairs and tapped at Mrs.
Tilney's door.

"You'd better go up," he said; "something's happening."

Donning a dressing sack, Mrs. Tilney hurried upstairs. Half an hour
later the doctor came. He gave one look at the woman moaning on her
pillow--in her nightdress, her hair in braids, she seemed scarcely more
than a girl--and then the doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"Pneumonia--going fast," he said.

By evening, the day after, it was all over. Steadily the lamp of life
burned dimmer, fading down to darkness; yet before its light failed
altogether it flickered once, gleaming momentarily. Then the watcher at
the bedside saw the dulled eyes open, grow bright, and she saw the lips
part and flutter.

"What is it, dearie?" whispered Mrs. Tilney.

Only an unintelligible murmur came, but of a part of it Mrs. Tilney
thought she was certain.

"Babbie! Barbara Wynne!" the lips seemed to call.

Down the hall Mrs. Tilney had gone hurriedly. Mr. Mapleson's door was
ajar, and there on the floor sat the little man and the child. They
were cutting strings of paper dolls out of newspaper.

"Come," Mrs. Tilney had said.

That brief flicker, though, had been the last. The mother love that
momentarily wrung back the passing spirit to its shell had yet not been
able to hold it there. Life had fled when Mrs. Tilney got back to the
room with the child.

The little girl's hand in hers, Mrs. Tilney walked from the room and
shut the door behind her. Never had she looked so grim, so sharp-faced,
so unlovely. Never had her bony, angular face, her slack figure and
sloping shoulders seemed so unalluring. But what of that?

Not one clew to the identity of either the mother or the child was
to be found among the dead woman's few possessions. The fact is her
trunk contained little. Such papers as were in it comprised only half
a dozen undated letters, brief notes for the most part, and none of
any value. All were addressed "Dearest D," and signed either "B," "H"
or "V." However, from a remark let fall by Mrs. Wynne it was inferred
that she had neither friends nor family in New York. It also was
inferred that she had come originally from out of town. That was all.
However, the trunk delivered up one thing that, if it were of no value
in identifying its owner, at least had a monetary value. This was a
diamond brooch. It paid ultimately for its former owner's burial.

Bab, you understand, never left Mrs. Tilney's. The night of the
mother's funeral Mr. Mapleson slipped down the hall toward Mrs.
Tilney's parlor. She sat there shrouded in the dusk and crooning softly.

"Well?" asked Mr. Mapleson.

"Hush!" whispered Mrs. Tilney fiercely. Pressed tight to her flat,
unlovely breast was Bab's rumpled head, and Mr. Mapleson had said no
more.

For those first few years the little old man sold dictionaries for
a living. It was a sordid, distressing trade. Then, too, the snubs
he received were, to a man of his shy nature, each a crucifixion.
Eventually, though, he was enabled to get other employment. It was as
bookkeeper in the Pine Street real-estate office.

That day his joy rose to a pitch of bubbling exultation. Picking up
Bab, he tossed her high.

"Diamonds and pearls! Diamonds and pearls! You'll wear 'em yet, you
wait!"

But Bab Wynne was of a far more practical turn of mind.

"Did you bring me my licorice stick?" she demanded.

It was Mr. Mapleson who had first taught Bab her letters. Step by step
he brought her up until it was time to send Bab to a school. Then, the
school having been selected, with the child's hand in his Mr. Mapleson
walked there with her every morning. At night, too, it was Mr. Mapleson
who always heard her lessons. "Spell _cat_," Mr. Mapleson would say;
and when Bab, after deep thought, announced that c-a-t spelled cat,
Mr. Mapleson would exclaim: "Very good! Very good!" and, laying down
the spelling book, would pick up the reader. "Read, please," he would
direct; and the little girl, bending earnestly over her book, would
display to the man's breathless interest that wonderful evidence of the
Creation, the marvel of a child's growing mind. "Oh, see the ox! Is the
ox kind? Yes, the ox is kind."

Mr. Mapleson would be enthralled.

"Diamonds and pearls!" he'd say. "Diamonds and pearls!"

There are times, though, one fears, when Bab Wynne, with the spirit
that betokens the dawning of a character, was not just so earnest, so
tractable. Pouting, she'd mumble: "Don't know how to spell cat!" or,
"No, I don't see the old ox!"

Mr. Mapleson would slowly shake his head.

"If you won't read and won't spell, Bab," he'd say, "how can you hope
ever to grow up a lady--a fine lady?"

"Don't want to be a fine lady!" Bab would answer.

Usually after this was a little silence. Then Mr. Mapleson would hold
out both his hands to her.

"D'you want to break Mr. Mapy's heart?" he'd ask.

That always fetched her. And thus had passed the years, one by one
drifting by. Bab had just turned twenty, and Mr. Mapleson's promise had
come true. "Diamonds and pearls! Diamonds and pearls!" he'd told her.
They were to be hers now. Bab Wynne at last had found her people!

       *       *       *       *       *

She still lay with her brown head buried among the pillows; and Mr.
Mapleson, his eyes gleaming like a bird's, bent above her, quivering,
his slender hand gently touching her on the cheek.

"Why, Babbie!"

She looked up suddenly, her eyes suffused.

"Oh, Mr. Mapy!" she whispered. "Is it true? Is it true?"

He had left the door open, and had one looked closely it would have
been seen in the light from outside that Mr. Mapleson started first,
and that then the color fled swiftly from his face.

"What do you mean?" he whispered; and rising from the pillow Bab bent
closer to him, her face rapt, her lips parting with excitement.

"I mean about me," she answered, her breast heaving gently--"about
everything! Last night you were talking and I heard--I couldn't help
listening! You were telling about the Beestons--about them--about me!
Oh, Mr. Mapy, is it true?"

Mr. Mapleson stared at her, his face like clay. He was shaking too.
Then he spoke, and his voice when she heard it was thick and harshly
broken. One would hardly have known it for his.

"Yes," said Mr. Mapleson, and quivered; "it's true! You're old man
Beeston's granddaughter. Your father was his son." And then Mr.
Mapleson said a very curious thing. "Yes--God help me!" he croaked.

Belowstairs all Mrs. Tilney's boarders sat at dinner, and in the
room lit dimly by the single gas jet the two were quite alone--the
white-faced, white-haired, faded little old man; the girl, youthful,
lovely, alluring. But alone though they were, the whole world at that
instant might have whirled about them, roaring, yet neither would have
heard it.

Bab presently spoke.

"You mean," she said slowly, wondering--"you mean that I'm theirs? That
they are coming to take me?"

Mr. Mapleson said, "Yes."

"And I'm to have everything now, really everything?" she asked. "You
mean I'm to have pretty clothes? To go everywhere? To know everyone
they know?"

It was so; and his face convulsed, his mouth working queerly, Mr.
Mapleson fell to nodding now like a mandarin on a mantelpiece.

"Yes, yes--everything!"

Again he bent over her, his expression once more rapt, once more
transfigured.

"Yes, and you can marry. You understand, don't you?" said Mr. Mapleson,
his voice eager, clear. "You can marry anyone. You understand--anyone?"

Then with a sudden gesture he held out his slender, pipelike arms; and
Bab, her face suffused, crept into them. For a moment Mr. Mapleson
patted the head hidden on his shoulder.

"You are happy, then?" he asked.

"Oh, Mr. Mapy! Mr. Mapy!" she whispered.




IV


The lawyers were to arrive at eight. Long before that hour came the
conviction that something startling was in the wind had begun gradually
to dawn in the minds of Mrs. Tilney's boarders. The dinner in itself
was significant.

Usually under Mrs. Tilney's practiced eye the meal progressed with
order, with propriety. Not so tonight In fact, the longer it continued,
the more it seemed to take on the haste, not to say the impulsiveness,
of an Alpine avalanche. Food, plates, silverware, all were hurled
across the terrain of the tablecloth as if discharged upon it by some
convulsion of Nature.

"Pardon!" said Miss Hultz, pausing abruptly in the middle of the
repast. Then she grasped Lena, the waitress, firmly by the wrist. "You
give me back that slaw!" directed Miss Hultz, her tone minatory. "The
idea, the way you're snatching things before I'm finished!"

Lena valiantly defended herself.

"You needn't lay it on me, miss! There's folks callin' to see Mrs.
Tilney at eight, I tell you, and I gotta git th' room cleared!"

"That's all right too!" retorted Miss Hultz. "Mrs. T. can ask in the
whole street if she's a mind, only I'm not going to give up eating!
Pass th' bread, Mr. Backus!"

Mr. Backus, the gentleman at Miss Hultz' left, was a plump, pasty young
man who worked in Wall Street, and as he passed the bread he inquired:

"What's th' madam giving, a _soirée_?"

"Sworry" was what he called it, but Miss Hultz seemed to comprehend.
Shrugging her shoulders, she raised at the same time her fine,
expressive eyebrows.

"Search me," she murmured indolently.

The colloquy, it appeared, had not been lost on the others; neither had
they missed the vague evidences that something unusual was happening in
Mrs. Tilney's house.

Mr. Jessup spoke suddenly.

"Did you say someone was coming?" he abruptly asked. Then he added:
"Tonight?"

His tone was queer. His air, too, was equally curious; and Mrs. Jessup
glanced up at him astonished.

"What's that?" she asked.

"I asked what was happening," said Mr. Jessup. Then, as no one seemed
able to answer him, he looked round the table. "Where's Mr. Mapleson?"
he suddenly inquired.

No one seemed able to tell him this.

"H'm!" said Mr. Jessup queerly, and picking up his knife and fork
he silently went on eating. His face, however, still wore a strange
expression.

Varick arose. He too had been conscious throughout the dinner of the
haste, the hurry that had filled it with confusion. However, he had
given little heed to that. Assured that something was happening, he was
at the same time little interested in its effect on Mrs. Tilney's table
arrangements. For Mr. Mapleson's was not the only face that was absent.
Bab, too, was missing.

A growing worry, in spite of himself, had begun to nag and nettle
Varick. He still pondered curiously over what had occurred between them
there in the dining-room before dinner. Then, besides, what was it that
was happening? Was she affected? His dinner half finished, he shoved
back his chair from the table.

"Hello, off for a party, I see!" knowingly cried Mr. Backus.

Varick nodded.

"Yes, just off," he returned; and glancing about the table, he bobbed
his head, smiling shyly. "Merry Christmas, everyone!"

Miss Hultz, for one, gave him a flashing smile, all her handsome teeth
revealed.

"Same to you, Mr. Varick! Many of them!"

"Sure! And a happy New Year, son!" added Mr. Backus.

All the others joined in, even crusty old Mr. Lomax, the broken-down,
disappointed life-insurance solicitor who tenanted Mrs. Tilney's back
parlor.

"---- Christmas, young man!" he grunted; and again fell to pronging his
slaw in moody silence. His wife leaned over and touched him. She was
a tall, faded woman in black silk and a lace cap, with the frail pink
cheeks that go with caps and black silk. "Some night you must put on
your full-dress suit too," she whispered. "We will go to a theater!"

As Varick passed toward the door her eyes followed him. She could
remember the time when Mr. Lomax, too, had looked young; when he had
seemed slender, vital, energetic. Varick saw the look, and as his eyes
caught hers he smiled at her in his friendly, boyish way. Mrs. Lomax
beamed.

The young man had reached the floor above and was passing on his way
up the second flight of stairs when Mr. Mapleson appeared suddenly at
the stairhead. The little man's haste was evident. The instant he saw
Varick he exclaimed:

"Why, there you are! I was just looking for you!"

He came pattering down the stairs, his small figure more alert, more
fussy, more bustling than ever. About it, though, was an uneasiness
that was unmistakable. His air was, in fact, as if he had steeled
himself to face something.

"You are going out?" he asked, his tone quick.

Varick said he was. Mr. Mapleson at the reply seemed to fuss and
flutter even more. Then, swiftly putting out his hand, he touched
Varick on the arm.

"Could you wait?" he appealed. "It is a favor--a great favor!"

Varick regarded him with surprise. The little man was quivering. For
the moment a fit of shyness more than usually awkward seemed painfully
to convulse him. His eyes leaped about him everywhere. Nor was his
speech less agitated.

"If you could wait," he faltered, "I have something to tell you."

Then his emotion, whatever the cause of it, got the better of him. "I
beg of you do not go yet!" he piped; and he peered up at Varick, his
eyes gleaming, his mouth working nervously.

A moment passed while Varick, his wonder growing, gazed down at the
white face turned up to his. Then he laid his hand quietly on Mr.
Mapleson's shoulder.

"Why, what's wrong, Mr. Mapleson?" he asked. "You're not in any
trouble, are you?"

Mr. Mapleson at the question looked blank.

"In trouble? I?"

"Yes. If I can help you----" Varick had begun, when the little man gave
vent to a sudden exclamation.

"I'm in no trouble! Who said I was?" he cried; and Varick stared,
gazing at him with renewed astonishment. If it wasn't for his own sake
that Mr. Mapleson had begged him to stay in, for whose, then, was it?
Varick at this point started with a sudden thought.

"Look here," he said sharply; "it isn't Bab, is it?"

The effect was immediate. Again Mr. Mapleson peered up at Varick, his
face transfigured; and again, his manner impulsive, he touched the
young man on the arm.

"She is very lovely, isn't she?" he said; "and she is very good and
sweet; don't you think she is?"

There was no doubt of it, but still Varick did not reply. A vague
understanding had begun to creep into his mind, and questioningly he
gazed down into the little man's upturned face.

"Tell me," said Mr. Mapleson--and as he heard him Varick's eyes grew
wide--"tell me," he faltered, "you do think her lovely? You do think
her sweet and lovely, don't you?"

Varick nodded slowly.

"Why, yes," he said, "she is very lovely." And at that Mr. Mapleson
gave vent to an eager exclamation.

His face gleaming, again he threw out both his hands.

"Oh!" he cried, "then if she were rich, if you knew her to be
well-born, too, why--why----" Here Mr. Mapleson began awkwardly to
falter--"Why, then you would--would----" There he paused. Moistening
his lips, the little man quivered suddenly: "She could marry--marry
anyone, don't you think?" he shrilled. "She could marry whom she chose;
you think so, don't you?"

But if he did, Varick did not say so. A moment passed, and then, as it
had been with Bab, a tide of color swept up into his face, mantling
it to the brows. In other words he had seen at last exactly what Mr.
Mapleson meant by his vague, faltering phrases. If Bab were rich, if
Bab were well-born, then would Varick marry her? The question was
never answered. Just then at Varick's back Mrs. Tilney's doorbell rang
suddenly.




V


Would he marry Barbara Wynne? That night with its train of abrupt,
confusing happenings, all following swiftly, one hard on the heels of
another, Varick ever afterward could remember only as the mind recalls
the vague, inconstant images of a dream. The least of it all, though,
was that veiled query put to him by Mr. Mapleson. However, he had
still to answer it, even to himself, when the clang of the doorbell
interrupted.

Outside in the vestibule stood two persons--a woman and a man. Their
voices, as they waited, were audible through the glass; and Varick,
once he heard them, listened curiously. Something in their tone was
familiar, especially in the woman's tone; and though the footfalls of
Lena, the waitress, already could be heard slipslopping on the stair,
he did not wait. Instinctively he threw open the door.

It was as he'd surmised. The two outside were known to him, and for a
moment he gazed, astonished. The lady--for manifestly in spite of her
curious appearance she was that--was the first to break the silence.

"Bless me!" she said in a voice that boomed like a grenadier's. "If it
isn't Bayard Varick!"

Her escort seemed equally astonished. The gentleman, a middle-aged,
medium-sized person with pale, myopic eyes, pale, drooping mustaches,
and thin, colorless hair, gave vent to a grunt, then a sniff. The
lady's buglelike tones, however, at once submerged this.

Her surprise at finding Varick there was not only startled, it was
scandalized, one saw.

"You don't mean you're living here?" she demanded. Afterward, having
given her bonnet a devastating jab with one hand, she remarked
eloquently: "My Lord!"

Varick in spite of himself had to smile. The world, or that part of the
world at least which arrogates to itself that title, ever will recall
with reverence--a regard, however, not unmixed with humor--that able,
energetic figure, Miss Elvira Beeston. The chatelaine, the _doyenne_
too, of that rich, powerful family, Miss Elvira enjoyed into the
bargain a personality not to be overlooked. Briefly, it would have
made her notable whatever her walk in life. But never mind that now. In
years she was sixty--that or thereabouts; in figure she was short, not
to mention dumpy. Bushy eyebrows, a square, craggy face, inquiring eyes
and a salient, hawklike nose comprised other details of her appearance.

As the prefix suggests, Miss Elvira never had married. There were
reasons, perhaps. Of these, however, the one advanced by the lady
herself possibly was the most plausible. "Life," she was heard to
observe, "has enough troubles as it is."

However, that she was a woman of mind, of character, rather than one
merely feminine, you would have divined readily from Miss Elvira's
dress. Her hat, a turban whose mode was at least three seasons in
arrears, sagged jadedly into the position where her hand last had
jabbed it; while her gown, equally rococo, was of a style with which no
washerwoman would have deigned to disfigure herself.

Her companion, the gentleman of the myopic eyes and pale mustaches,
was her niece's husband, De Courcy Lloyd. Old Peter Beeston was his
father-in-law. His air bored, his nose uplifted and his aspect that
of one pursuing a subtle odor, Mr. Lloyd advanced into Mrs. Tilney's
hallway. Evidently its appointments filled him with distaste, for
having glanced about him he was just remarking, "Good Lord! What a
wretched hole!" when of a sudden there was a diversion.

Mr. Mapleson was still in the hallway. The instant the doorbell rang
he started; and then had one looked, a quick change would have been
seen to steal over the little man's gray, furrowed features. In turn
the varying emotions of alertness, interest, then agitation pictured
themselves on his face; and now, having for a moment gazed blankly at
Miss Beeston, he gave vent to a stifled cry. The next instant, turning
on his heel, Mr. Mapleson fled at full tilt up the stairs. He ran,
his haste unmistakable, flitting like a frightened rabbit. Then as he
reached the stairhead he turned and cast a glance behind him. It was at
Miss Beeston he looked, and Varick saw his face. Terror convulsed the
little man. The look, however, was lost on Miss Elvira. Having glanced
about her for a moment, she leveled at Varick a pudgy yet commanding
finger.

"Well, young man," bugled Miss Elvira; "you haven't told me yet what
you are doing here?"

Varick, with a queer expression on his face, turned to her.

"Don't you know?" he inquired quietly.

Miss Beeston didn't. From the time Varick had been a boy in short
trousers she had known him. Added to that, he long had been a friend, a
close friend, too, of her nephew, crippled David Lloyd.

"That reminds me," Miss Elvira said abruptly, "why haven't you been to
see us lately?"

Varick gave his shoulders a shrug. The shrug, though, was deprecatory
rather than rude. That somehow he felt awkward was evident. Miss
Beeston stared inquiringly.

"Well?"

"Your brother knows," Varick was saying; "perhaps you'd better ask
him," when he became aware that Miss Elvira was neither interested in
what he was telling her nor, for that matter, listening to him.

Her square, unlovely face raised expectantly, she stood looking up the
stairway, and as Varick gazed at her he saw a sudden transformation.
The square jaw seemed to grow less square; the bright, inquiring eyes
visibly softened, their gleam less hard, less penetrating, while Miss
Elvira's mouth, set ordinarily in a shrewd, covert grin, seemed for a
moment to quiver. Her breast, too, was gently heaving and, marveling,
Varick turned to look.

At the head of the stairs stood Barbara. Her hand on the stair rail,
she paused momentarily, staring at the strangers in the hall below.
Then a faint air of wonderment crept into her face, and, her eyes on
Miss Elvira, she came slowly down toward her.

Miss Elvira's square, squat form was as if suddenly transfigured.
For once in her life a rare, indefinable beauty shone upon her plain
unlovely features--a radiance that would have startled into wonder Miss
Elvira's cronies had they been there to see it. She did not speak. She
stood, bending forward, her mouth working, her eyes glowing beneath
their shaggy brows.

Bab walked straight to her.

"I am Barbara--Barbara Wynne," she said. "You've come to see me, I
suppose?"

Varick, puzzled, looked from one to the other in his wonder. As yet he
grasped nothing of what was going on. "Why, what is it?" he murmured to
Miss Elvira. By now, however, that lady had forgotten that Varick even
existed. With a jab at her bonnet, her hard old face twitching queerly,
she suddenly threw out both her hands.

"Come here, girl," said Miss Elvira thickly, her voice cracking as she
spoke; "you know me, don't you? I'm your father's aunt--yours too. I've
come to take you home."

       *       *       *       *       *

Late that night, long after the dinner hour at Mrs. Tilney's, the news
of what had happened ran from room to room. To say the boarding house
was stupefied but barely expresses it. The story read like a fairy tale.

It was told, for example, how twenty years before, old man Beeston's
son, against his father's will, had married an insignificant nobody--a
girl without either wealth or position. Disowned, then disinherited,
the son as well as the woman he'd married had disappeared. It was as if
the grave had swallowed them. Which, indeed, had been the case, as both
the man and his girl wife were dead. A child, however, had survived
them, and that child was Bab. Picture the sensation at Mrs. Tilney's!

"Well, talk of luck!" remarked Miss Hultz, who had been among the
first to hear the news. "She can have anything she wants now!"
A thought at this instant entering her mind, she gave a sudden
exclamation. "Why, she can even have Mr. Varick!" There seemed no
reason to doubt it.

In Mrs. Tilney's house, it happened, was one person who did not share
Miss Hultz' view. This was Varick himself!

Eleven o'clock had struck and Bab, with her little handbag packed,
her face white, had been whirled away uptown in the Beestons' big
limousine. Mrs. Tilney, too, had made her exit. Her gaunt face drawn
and grim, she sat in her bedroom staring into the cold, burned-out
grate. Its ashes seemed somehow to typify her sense of desolation, of
loneliness; for, as she reflected, Bab was gone, Bab was no longer
hers. How swift it all had been! How unexpected! However, with that
fortitude bred of a long familiarity with fate--or call it fortune if
you like--Mrs. Tilney accepted dry-eyed this last gift it offered; and
with a sigh she arose and made ready for bed.

Meanwhile, on the floor above, Varick had just knocked at Mr.
Mapleson's door. His face was a study. All the color had left it until
he was white, ash pale, and his gray eyes were clouded darkly.

"Mapleson," he said thickly, "do you know what you've done?"

The little man gaped. He cringed, starting as if he had been struck.
Then from Mr. Mapleson's face, too, the last vestige of color sped
swiftly.

"I?" he gasped.

Varick grimly nodded.

"Yes, you, Mapleson! It was you, wasn't it, that had those letters,
the ones in that dead woman's trunk? It was you, too, wasn't it, that
gave the lawyers the other papers--their proofs?" His voice rasping, he
stared at the little man fixedly. "A fine mess, man, you've made of it!"

Both hands at his mouth, Mr. Mapleson shrank back, quivering.

"What do you mean?" he shrilled, and Varick shrugged his shoulders
disgustedly.

"Just what I say!" he returned. "You don't know, do you, it was that
man, that scoundrel, who ruined my father? You don't know, do you, he
was the one who trimmed him in Wall Street? And now you've given her to
him!"

Mr. Mapleson stared at him appalled.

"Ruined? He? Your father?" he stammered brokenly. "Beeston?"

The sweat started suddenly on Varick's brow.

"Don't you know I love her?" he cried. "Don't you know I want her? You
don't think they'd let me have her now, do you?"

But the little man did not heed. All at once he tossed up both his
hands.

"What have I done?" he groaned. "Oh, what have I done?"




VI


The wayfarer familiar with the highways and byways of New York will
recall that in one of the widest, the most select of the uptown
side streets opening off Fifth Avenue there is a row of brownstone
double dwellings of imposing grandeur and magnitude, and of the most
incredible ugliness as well. Not even Mayfair in London can show worse;
for that matter, neither can Unter den Linden or even Pittsburgh. A
wide stairway with swollen stone balustrades guards the street front of
each; and above these the houses themselves rise flatly, their façades
chiefly notable for their look of smug, solid respectability--that
and a wide acreage of plate-glass windows. Formerly a vast variety of
rococo tutti-frutti decoration in the stonecutter's best art ornamented
these fronts; but today the weather, as well as a sluggish uneasiness
awakening in the tenants' minds, has got rid of the most of it; so that
now the houses look merely commonplace, merely rich. But be that as it
may, this particular Christmas Eve it was to the largest, the richest,
and most formidable of these dwellings that the Beeston limousine
brought Bab. For Bab had come home.

The ride, brief as it was, up the lighted, glittering Avenue, Bab felt
she ever would remember with a vividness that not even time could mar.
It was her first opportunity to get her mind in order. She a Beeston?
She, the little boarding-house waif, heir to a goodly fortune? Bab felt
she had only to say "Pouf!" to burst, to shatter into air the frail,
evanescent fabric of that bubble!

So many things had happened! So many, too, had happened all at once!
The excitement fading now, she began to feel herself languid and
oppressed. And yet, as she knew, the night's ordeal had scarcely begun.
In a few minutes now she was to see her father's own father, that grim
and masterful figure, Peter Beeston. What would happen then?

In the newspapers that day Bab had read that the old man was at death's
door. If this had been true, though, there was now a surprising
change. Peter Beeston was not dead, neither was he dying; instead,
the news having got to him that his son's child had been found, it
had roused him like an elixir. "Bring her here!" he'd said. When they
had protested, fearful of the effect on him, the man had turned in
smoldering wrath. "Bring her, d'ye hear!" he'd rumbled fiercely. "You
bring her, I say!" So Bab, as he'd ordered, was being brought.

It would be difficult to tell how much she dreaded it! If only Mr. Mapy
could have come with her! To be sure, Miss Beeston had been kind, she
had been gentle; but still Bab wished she could have with her in the
coming ordeal someone she had always known. Curiously, however, Mr.
Mapy had disappeared. Neither she nor anyone else for hours had laid
eyes on him.

She vaguely wondered why. As she remembered now, on her way downstairs
that night she had met him coming up; Mr. Mapy was running,
helter-skelter too. Besides, she recalled how queer his face had
looked--agitated, quite fearful, in fact. More than that, though she'd
tried to speak to him he hadn't heeded her. He had rushed on up the
stairs.

But then Mr. Mapy was not the only one that night who'd acted
curiously. There was Varick too. The impression crept over her that for
what had happened, her good fortune, Varick had seemed even sorry.
That was it--sorry! Why?

It was when he came downstairs, dressed ready to go out, that he had
said good-by.

They met on the stairs, and for a moment she had stood with him in the
dim light on the landing. His face was grave, silent, grim. It looked
to her, too, as if he'd had something he would have liked to say to
her. But he didn't. Awkwardly he put out his hand.

"Good-by, Bab," he'd said.

"Good-by, Mr. Varick," she had answered, clumsily at a loss for
anything else to say; and again he had smiled, a dry, dusty smile.

"Good-by; I won't see you again!"

It was not at all what she'd pictured--that parting.

Bab, however, had little time, little opportunity to mull over thoughts
like these. She had no more than begun to reflect on Varick's curious
attitude when the limousine, turning the corner, rolled up to the
Beeston door.

"Ah, here we are!" the condescending voice of Mr. Lloyd announced; and
the footman having thrown open the limousine door, Bab glanced past
him at the house beyond. Dark, no light from its windows anywhere, it
loomed like a cliff, a towering crag high above the pavement. She could
have gasped at its magnitude.

Miss Elvira, who had sat during the drive sunk back in a corner of the
car, arose briskly.

"Come!" she said, and the next instant, the street door opening from
within, Bab stood gazing about her with breathless interest at the
house which once had been her father's home.

If the place outside had seemed huge, within she felt engulfed by it.
A drawing-room, now a vast vault of darkness, lay on one hand, while
on the other was a reception room, itself cavernous in its immensity.
Beyond, other rooms opened too. Bab glimpsed a library, then a
dining-room, its sideboard and serving table glittering with silver.
But of all this she had no more than a glance. A footman had opened the
door for them, and in addition to him the butler stood in the hall. To
him Miss Elvira turned abruptly.

"Well, Crabbe?" she demanded.

The man, a white-haired, pink-cheeked old fellow who had been staring
round-eyed at Bab, got himself hastily together.

"The doctor's still upstairs--the assistant, that is, madam. The
master's stronger, 'e says."

Miss Elvira did not tarry. With a sign to Bab the energetic lady went
bustling up the stairs, the others trooping after her. Not more than
half a minute later Bab found herself standing at her grandfather's
bedside.

What happened upon that was swift, inexpressibly confusing. The room
in which old Peter Beeston lay was huge, like all the rest of that
house. It was a crypt-like impressive chamber, and was furnished darkly
in the same massive way. And like his surroundings, the room and its
furniture--the big dressing table, the vast writing desk, the massive
four-poster that held him--the man himself was huge, a bulk of a man
whose fierce, brooding face glowered about him as threatening as a
thunder-cloud.

Bab gazed at him in awe. He lay outstretched, his limbs crossed like
a Crusader's beneath the sheets; and though both age and illness had
ravaged him the impression he gave was still of giant force, of giant
fierceness too. His face, framed among the pillows, gazed up at her
with a quick, inquiring look; and then, as he seemed to comprehend, Bab
felt his eye drill through and through her with piercing intensity. His
lips moved, his mouth worked momentarily, and he seemed about to speak.
But when he did speak it was not to Bab.

Lloyd as well as Miss Elvira had accompanied Bab into the room, and
of this Beeston instantly was aware. One gnarled, knotted hand raised
itself from the coverlid, and, turning his eyes from Bab, he spoke. The
speech came fiercely rumbling.

"Get out!" he said.

Lloyd's air thus far had been singularly curious, and now Bab saw him
start.

"Do you mean me, sir?" he asked awkwardly. His manner, Bab thought, was
uncomfortable, strangely uncertain for one heretofore so cocksure, so
condescending; and she looked at him surprised.

Again Beeston spoke. The hand he had raised struck the coverlid a
sudden blow, and the room rumbled with the echo of his voice.

"Get out, I say!" he repeated; and Lloyd, after a quick look at Bab, a
glance the resentment of which she did not miss, withdrew abruptly.

Then old Beeston raised his hand, his forefinger beckoning.

"Vira," he said. "Vira!" And when his sister bent over him old Beeston
growled thickly, his voice, if rough, still friendly: "Vira, you go
too, old girl!"

So Bab found herself left alone with that grim, dark figure lying
there--her grandfather.

"Come closer!" rumbled Beeston. "I want to look at you!"

A pause followed. Her heart beating thickly, Bab drew nearer to the
bed, and as she stood there gazing down at the swart, fierce face
staring darkly up at hers, pity for an instant welled into her heart.
This was her father's father, she told herself; and troubled, she began
to see now that if this masterful, unconquerable man had ruined others'
happiness in his life, he had ruined his own as well.

The knotted hand upon the counterpane reached out suddenly.

"They say you're my son's child," said Peter Beeston. "Well, are you?"

His voice carried in it a note of intimidation, of truculent disbelief,
but now she felt no fear of him. The hand that held hers she could feel
quiver too.

"Yes," she said.

Again a pause. He wet his lips, his tongue running on them dryly,
eagerly; and then of a sudden his eyes left hers and went drifting
toward the ceiling. His voice when again he spoke broke thickly.

"Tell me about him, about my son!" said Beeston.

Bab looked at him hesitantly. It was this that she had dreaded.

"What shall I tell you?" she asked.

Beeston's eyes still were on the ceiling.

"Dead, isn't he?" he demanded.

Yes, he was dead, as the man lying there long must have known; and her
trouble growing, Bab stared silently at him. But the grim eyes gave no
sign.

"You don't look like him!" said her grandfather suddenly, so abruptly
that she started. "You must look like that woman, eh!"

Bab gazed at him steadily.

"You mean my mother, don't you?" she inquired. She had been prepared
for this, and in her voice was a tone of quiet decisiveness she meant
him clearly to see. "You mustn't speak like that," she said clearly.
"My mother did you no wrong!"

She saw his eyes leap from the ceiling to her and back again. Then a
smile, a grim effigy of merriment, dawned in his somber face. A growl
followed it.

"So you're self-willed, eh?" he rumbled. "You're all Beeston, I see!"
Then a grunt, a sneer escaped him. "I'd be careful, young woman! I'm
all Beeston too, and I've seen what comes to us self-willed folk! Your
own father, because of it, ruined himself. That's not all either.
Because of it, too, my daughter is married to a fool! Oh, I've seen
enough of it!" he rumbled.

Bab was startled. She knew, she thought, the fool he meant, but to that
she gave but momentary heed. Struggling up, his face dark, convulsed,
no doubt, with the thoughts rioting in his mind, Beeston turned and
shook roughly into place the pillows that supported him. And this was
the man they had thought dying! Grumbling, growling thickly, he lay
back then, the growls subsiding presently like thunder muttering away
among the depths of distant hills.

She was still gazing at him, absorbed, startled, when she saw a change
steal upon the man's distorted face. It was as if that instant's rage,
flaming hotly, must have lighted in the dim recesses of his mind some
forgotten cell; for of a sudden the smoldering anger of his eyes passed
and he sat staring at the wall.

"Well, won't you tell me?" he asked heavily. "I want to know about my
son."

But Bab knew nothing to tell. That was why the ordeal she had faced
that night had filled her so with dread. The little she knew of either
of her parents was what they had told her at Mrs. Tilney's. Vaguely
they'd had the impression that the mother had come from somewhere
upstate; where, they did not know. But scant as this information was
and shadowy, what they'd learned of the father was even less. Of his
history they had gathered nothing, not even an impression. As for
herself, she remembered nothing of him. Nor did she know when he had
died or how. She could not, in fact, even tell where her father's
grave was; and, sunken among the pillows, Beeston lay staring at the
ceiling. Then suddenly he stirred.

"You mean you can't tell me anything? Answer me!" he said, his voice
breaking thickly. "He was my son; I drove him from me! Don't you
understand? I want to know! I've got to; he was my boy!"

Bab strove to free her hand from his.

"You're hurting me," she said, and at that he abruptly recovered
himself.

"Eh?" he said, as if awakening.

He dropped her hand then, and, his eyes closing, he lay back among
the pillows, his breast heaving with the tumult of emotions that had
tortured him. But now that the struggle had passed the man's face
changed anew with one of those astonishing transformations that so
often marked his character. He smiled wanly. The fierceness waned from
his face. And as Bab, pitying anew, sat gazing down at him, Beeston's
hand again crept out and softly closed on hers. Drawing her toward him,
he laid his cheek to hers.

"Don't be afraid," whispered Peter Beeston. "Don't be afraid! You're
my boy's girl--his! You need never be afraid of me!"

Ten minutes later, when Miss Elvira and the nurse looked into the room,
they found Bab perched on the bed talking to Beeston as if she had
always known him. A smile played about the corners of the man's grim
mouth. He held her hand in his.




VII


As Mr. Mapleson, bubbling with anticipation, had foreseen, the city the
following morning awoke to a good, old-fashioned white Christmas. At
midnight the snow began to fall and, the storm thickening hour after
hour, by dawn the streets were deep with it.

Her room had been darkened, the hangings at the windows tightly drawn,
so that Bab, worn by the strain of the night before, slumbered on long
past her usual hour for awakening. But presently a peal of chimes
clanging a stave from a near-by church-steeple broke in on her, and
with a start she sat upright. Dazed, drowsy-eyed, her perceptions still
misty, she gazed about her in momentary wonder. Brunnehilde awakening
could not more have been at a loss. Then with a throb she remembered.

Outside the chimes still pealed; the snow crept whispering on the
window panes; and at the end of the street, murmuring like a sea, the
muffled roar of the Avenue arose. Within the house, though, all was
silent; and, her breath coming swiftly, Bab gazed about her open-eyed.

The surroundings, in contrast with her own little room at Mrs.
Tilney's, were quite enough to make her stare. At the boarding house
chintz of a cheap but pretty design was the fabric most in evidence.
The curtains were made of it and so was the valance on Bab's little
bed--that and the drapery on her dressing table. But here brocade thick
and board-like formed the window hangings; the bureau cover was linen
edged with Irish lace; and the bed was a vast thing of mahogany, its
four posts crowned by a canopy, its coverlid of costly embroidered silk.

The other appointments were as rich. Her eyes, roaming about the room,
glanced from one side of it to the other in wondering appreciation.
Ivory and heavy, finely chased silver filled the dressing table; a
great tilting pier glass stood beside it, and there were ornaments of
porcelain and chased crystal on the mantel; while at each side of the
four-poster, on the carpet's yielding pile, was spread a white fur rug,
the skin of a great Polar bear. The more Bab's glances roved about, the
more she marveled at the many costly evidences of wealth, of luxury
that surrounded her.

And to think that this room, once her father's, was with all its
wealth, the riches it conveyed, now hers! Propped up among the pillows,
her diminutive figure lost in the midst of the great four-poster, Bab
sat absorbed in profound reflection. It was the strangeness of it all
that for the moment weighed on her spirits. The big, dim room, too, so
vast and solemn, sent a shadow of loneliness creeping into her heart;
and just then, on the mantel over the fireplace, the clock ticking
busily there softly struck the hour. That was the finishing touch! Each
stroke she counted separately. There were nine of them! With a catch in
her breath, a stifled gulp, she remembered that at Mrs. Tilney's they
would just be sitting down to breakfast!

Breakfast--Christmas breakfast--and Bab would not be with them! First
there would be grapefruit, each like an apple of the Hesperides, a
golden globe of juiciness, its edge fluted by a dexterous hand. Then
would follow beefsteak, baked potatoes, coffee with real cream and,
to finish, a great heaping platter of waffles of a luscious golden
yellow and steaming hot. Where could food be found better than this?
Where, too, would one look for more goodwill and simple kindliness,
more cheerfulness and pleasure, than in that simple, homely party there
gathered about Mrs. Tilney's board?

Her eyes misty, the lump thickening in her throat, Bab sat poring on
that picture in her mind. In honor of the occasion Mrs. Tilney herself
would be seated at the head of the table. At the opposite end would be
Mr. Mapleson, his eyes snapping with excitement and merriment, his shy,
frosty little giggle sounding at every turn. For Christmas was a great
day with the little man! The night before he had been up until all
hours trimming a tree in the parlor. The tree was for all. No one, not
even the newest boarder, would be forgotten.

"Understand," Mr. Mapleson would say, "we all can't have a home--not
our own maybe; but we all can have Christmas, can't we?"

Even Mary Mangin, the kitchen behemoth, would be bidden in. Her arms
akimbo, a mountainous monument of tittering embarrassment, she would be
escorted to the tree by Mr. Mapleson himself. Then with a great to-do
the little man would squirrel fussily among the many packages, hunting
the required one. "Ha! here we have it!" he would finally exclaim.
"Miss Maria Mangin, with Merry Christmas from Kris Kringle!" Whereat
Mary Mangin, with a seismic convulsion shaking her from pediment to
dome, would totter to the nearest sofa and, to the peril of that piece,
crash down upon it, exclaiming the while in Mr. Mapleson's behalf: "Th'
fairies be good to ye! Th' fairies be good to ye!" Then, when all the
others had had their presents, and he had made sure no one had been
overlooked, the little man would sit down in a corner and, his eyes
gleaming, his hands trembling eagerly, would open the parcels that held
the presents for himself.

What a time then! What chirps! What giggles! What laughter and
merriment! "Just what I wanted!" "Why, the very thing!" "Who told
you I needed that?" "Why, Mrs. Jessup!" he cried once. "How did you
ever dream----" The sentence never was finished. "Here, give me that;
it's for Bab!" Mrs. Jessup cried scandalized; and she snatched from
the little man the pink silk hairpin case which he'd been delightedly
accepting. One present, however, Mr. Mapleson always reserved to the
last, carefully laying it aside until all the others had been opened.
Then, his eyes glowing with soft brightness, and his deft, slender
fingers prying skillfully, he would make haste, but gently, to undo its
ribbons and its wrappings. But first, before he came to the present,
he would find a little card with a border of bright green and red
Christmas holly:

  FOR MR. MAPY,
    With love and Merry Xmas,
      FROM BAB!

"H'm!" Mr. Mapleson would say, and he would violently blow his nose.
"H'm!"

Then---- The picture faded, blurring suddenly, and with a stifled sob
Bab turned and buried her head swiftly among the pillows of the big
four-poster. Mr. Mapy this morning would not have his present. It lay
forgotten in a drawer of her bureau at Mrs. Tilney's.

Poor Mr. Mapleson! She lay for a while thinking of the little man and
of all his tenderness for her; and presently out of that thought, a
feeling of comfort cheered her. Mr. Mapy would understand. He always
did. He would know she did not really forget him. It was only because
everything had been so sudden, so amazing. Her spirits climbing, she
again sat up among the pillows and, with a growing excitement gently
stimulating her, once more glanced about her in the big, dim room.

She was still sitting there, her mind alive with a hundred thoughts,
when there was a tap at the door, then a maid stole in. The servant, a
tall, angular Englishwoman with a stony, imperturbable face, went to
the windows and began throwing back the hangings.

"Begging pardon, it's nine o'clock, my lady, and snowing. Mrs. Lloyd
asks if you will see her shortly."

"Mrs. Lloyd?"

"Yes, miss. She and Mr. Lloyd are motoring out to Long Island for
luncheon."

Then Bab remembered. Mrs. Lloyd was the aunt she had not yet seen. How
kind of her to think so soon of her new niece. Surely Bab would go down
to see her, and at once.

"And if you please, miss," the maid announced, "a box of flowers was
left for you this morning. Will you have it now?"

"Flowers?"

Even under the Englishwoman's cold, impassive stare she could not
restrain the exclamation. Who could have sent her flowers, Christmas
flowers? A moment later the maid handed her the long pasteboard box,
then she withdrew. With rounding eyes Bab lifted off the box cover.

"Oh, you darlings!" she whispered.

A great sheaf of cut flowers lay within. There were roses, pale
Gloire de Dijons; there were lilies of the valley, mignonette, and
hyacinths--these and lacelike sprays of maidenhair fern. Never before
had she seen a box like this, much less had it sent to her; and lifting
out the cluster of fragrant, delicately tinted roses she pressed them
to her face, reveling in their beauty.

"Oh, you darlings!"

Then the card lying in the box caught her eye:

  For Bab, with a Merry Christmas
  and much love from her new cousin,

  DAVID LLOYD

Her heart beat quickly, and she was conscious that a faint color burned
in her cheeks as she read the writing, penned in a delicate, well-bred
hand. She knew of David Lloyd. He was the cripple boy--the man
rather--she had asked Varick about; and as she read anew his kindly,
pleasant greeting her heart warmed instinctively to her new-found
relative.

How good it all seemed! How wonderful it was! Not even in her wildest
imagination had she dreamed it was to be like this! To think she not
only had found her kin, but that they should prove so kind! She did
not care now who saw how her eyes were glistening. She could have sung
aloud of her happiness.

"Your bath is drawn, miss," Mawson, the impassive Englishwoman,
announced, and resigning the flowers to her, Bab arose. As she
dressed, it became evident that if Bab and the world at large had been
astonished at the sudden change in her fortunes, Miss Elvira had not.
Manifestly that able lady not only must have known for days what was
to be expected, she also had prepared for it. Many little luxuries she
had laid in to make Bab comfortable; and as Mawson brought them out,
one by one, Bab felt her heart beat swifter, then more swiftly still.
If only Mr. Mapy could have been there! If only he and she could have
joined hands once to dance round, to rejoice! Mawson, imperturbable,
bony-faced, was about as good company as a gryphon! However, not
even Mawson's stoniness could quite repress all her feeling of
wonder-growing joy. She was too young, too unspoiled and unaffected, to
lose the bloom of it, and as she hurried to finish dressing her face
was radiant.

Her first duty, as she hurried down the stairs, was to tap at her
grandfather's door. The trained nurse answered, and as she saw who
had knocked she beamed pleasantly. The patient, it appeared, was much
brighter. He had already asked for Bab. She was to see him at noon;
and, thanking the young woman, Bab hurried on. She must not keep the
Lloyds!

The dining-room, like the other rooms in that vast house, was itself
vast--a great, dimly lighted apartment where the decorations, all of
the richest sort, were a legacy of that morose, astonishing era of bad
taste, the late Victorian period. Quartered oak and an embossed bronze
wall-paper vied with each other in gloominess; while the sideboard,
the table and the chairs, in the style of the early eighties, wore
a corresponding air of stodgy, solid richness and melancholy. This
effect, too, was heightened by the pictures on the wall, all valuable
and each, of course, a still life--the usual fish, the inevitable
platter of grapes and oranges, the perpetual overturned basket of
flowers. A group of sheep by Verboeckhoven, typically woolly, completed
the display.

As Bab, her heart doing a little tattoo in anticipation, passed along
the hall, she saw that her aunt and uncle had left the table and
were standing on the rug before the fire, their heads together, and
talking earnestly. A morning coat, Piccadilly striped trousers and
tan spats at the moment attired Mr. Lloyd; but one had but to glance
once at the pale, myopic, blasé gentleman to guess that presently
he would retire to change, his man helping him, into clothes more
suitable for motoring--a lounge suit of tweeds, say, or homespun. Bab,
smiling shyly, was just entering the dining-room when Lloyd looked
up. Instantly she saw him start. She was certain, too, she heard him
whisper swiftly a warning: "Look out!" Then, turning away, Lloyd fell
to twirling idly his pale, limp mustaches.

That they were talking about her was manifest. That what they said
was not meant for her to hear also was manifest. For an instant she
faltered. She felt her color self-consciously betrayed her.

"Oh, here you are!" Lloyd exclaimed in his inconsequent, singsong
voice. "We've been waiting for you, you know!"

His voice was pleasant enough, though at the same time he smiled.
Subconsciously, if not directly though, Bab began to divine a hint
of antagonism in the man. Evidently for some reason he had not as
yet accepted her as Miss Elvira had, as his son, too, had accepted
her--that is, if the message with the flowers meant anything. However,
having greeted him, she turned shyly to her aunt. While waiting Mrs.
Lloyd had been frankly studying her.

"So this is our new relative, is it?" she remarked. Afterward she
briefly held out a hand. She did not offer to kiss her niece.

Bab felt subtly bewildered. Her aunt was a tall, finely formed woman, a
Boadicea in bigness, her eyes a light iris-blue, her mouth small with
curiously puckered lips. It was her voice, though, that most held Bab.
In it was that note of repression, a studied indolence almost insolent,
that women of her class and kind often cultivate. Idly tolerant it was
rather than interested, Bab thought.

There were many things that morning that she would have liked to ask
about--her father, for example, his boyhood, what he'd been like, who
his friends had been. All this and more! It appeared, however, that
the topic held but scant interest for the Lloyds, for Lloyd the least
of all. A few passing references, to be sure, were made to Bab's dead
father; but in every instance these were as lacking in interest, in
intimacy, as if uttered by a stranger. In her own affairs, she felt
presently, their curiosity was far more robust.

Lloyd, reaching out, touched a near-by button.

"Breakfast, Lumley," he directed, indicating Bab to the manservant who
entered. Then when she had seated herself Lloyd returned to his place
on the hearthrug. While Mrs. Lloyd in her dragging, wearied voice
addressed herself to Bab, her husband sedulously inspected his finger
nails.

Curiously he seemed nervous, irritable too; but that he paid close heed
to the talk Bab somehow felt sure. It did not add to her easiness.
What was the matter? Why was their air so queer? Mrs. Lloyd, her
manner on the surface blandly idle but her curiosity still evident,
was questioning Bab about her life at Mrs. Tilney's, how she had gone
there, why she had remained, when of a sudden Lloyd's increasing
interest got the better of him.

"Look here," he remarked to Bab abruptly, "you know Varick, don't
you--the chap there last night?"

Know Varick? The teacup she had raised to her lips hung suspended, and
for a moment she gazed over it at Lloyd, inwardly astonished at his
tone.

"Why, yes," she replied.

He shot a glance at Mrs. Lloyd.

"Varick's lived there a long time, too, hasn't he?" he demanded.

"Since last spring," answered Bab quietly.

"And you know him rather well, too, don't you?" persisted Lloyd.

Bab put down her teacup. Her uncle's voice not only was querulous; it
had in it, for some reason, a note of mocking accusation. Varick, to
be sure, was acquainted with the Lloyds; but the uncle's queries had
behind them, she saw, more than a mere social interest. Nor was that
all! While the man was plying her with his questions her aunt, she was
conscious, was studying her with scrutinous attention. Phryne before
the Areopagus could not have felt more challenged; and her wonder
rising, her discomfort keeping pace with it, she was parrying her
uncle's cross-examination when of a sudden there was an interruption.

"Good morning!" cried a cheerful voice. "Merry Christmas, everyone!"

Bab, as she looked round, breathed a sigh of relief.

The smiling, boyish fellow who stood there, framed for a moment in
the doorway, Bab, in the months to come, was destined to know better
than any man she yet had met. Her interest in him was instant. In age
he was perhaps twenty-eight, and he was slight of figure, with crisp,
reddish-brown hair, an animated face, and shrewd, kindly gray eyes,
deep-set and expressive. Gentle, one saw he was, but in that gentleness
was nothing weak, nothing effeminate. In David Lloyd--Peter Beeston's
grandson--the strength, the character, that had skipped Beeston's own
children again had made itself evident. As she looked at him a swift,
sudden stab of pity pierced Bab to the core. Crutches supported him. He
was a hopeless cripple.

He came forward swiftly, skillfully guiding himself along the
treacherous hardwood floor, and his face was lighted with pleasure.
"This is Bab, isn't it?" he smiled; and propping himself on the
crutches, he held out a welcoming hand. Of his heartiness she saw she
need have no fear; and shyly responsive, she gave him her hand. The
clasp of his cool, strong fingers was singularly friendly, reassuring,
too; and though the telltale color again flew its pennons in her face,
this time it signaled only pleasure.

"Think of it!" he laughed. "A week ago I didn't even dream I had a
cousin!" Then he gave her a sly, whimsical look: "Much less such a
good-looking one!"

Bab felt her spirits rise mercurially. He pulled out a chair and,
teetering perilously for an instant on his crutches, made ready to sit
down. Bab caught swiftly at her breath.

"Let me help!" she exclaimed, and half rose from her chair; but the
cripple shook his head.

"Don't bother," he chuckled lightly; "I always manage somehow. There
now!" he added as he lowered himself to the chair. One might have
thought from it that the affliction that had maimed him for life was
merely a day's disability. "Now don't mind me," he directed, "just you
finish your breakfast!"

His pleasant, graceful good-nature diffused about him an air of
cheerfulness that seemed to lighten even the dining-room's atmosphere
of gloomy dimness; and inspired by it his father and mother too awoke,
joining in the talk. It was not for long though. Again in gloomy
abstraction his father began to inspect his finger nails; again his
mother resumed her covert scrutiny of her niece.

"Hello!" David all at once exclaimed. "What's the trouble?"

Bab saw the father glance swiftly at Mrs. Lloyd, and as he did so she
was sure her aunt made him a swift, subtle signal. It was as if she
impressed silence. But if so Lloyd gave no heed.

"Trouble?" he echoed. "What makes you think that?" Then with a queer
look he abruptly added: "What do you think--last night we saw Varick!"

"Bayard!" cried David. His interest was evident.

"Why, yes," returned his father. "He's living there in that boarding
house."

There was a subtle emphasis in what he said that did not escape Bab,
and again her wonder rose. What was their interest in Varick? Why,
too, had they looked to her to satisfy their singular curiosity? Was
Varick's presence at Mrs. Tilney's more than a mere coincidence? If it
were, why were they concerned? She still was cogitating, bewildered
now, when out of the corner of her eye she again saw her aunt make
Lloyd a guarded signal. But Lloyd merely frowned.

David spoke then, his tone wondering.

"You say he's living where Bab was? Why, what in the world is he doing
there?"

"That's what I'd like to know!" instantly answered his father, and
again Bab marked in his tone that note of covert significance. David,
however, did not seem to hear it.

"You don't mean Bayard's penniless?" he said hesitantly. "It can't be
possible his father lost everything!"

He had, it appeared; but even so that was not what Lloyd, Senior, had
sought to convey. For a third time Bab saw him glance at Mrs. Lloyd,
and in turn her aunt signaled him anew. Now, however, it was David,
not Bab, whom she indicated; and Bab's wonder grew. What was it about
Varick they did not wish their son to know? As before Lloyd disregarded
the signal, this time turning to Bab.

"Come now," he said abruptly, his tone almost brusque, "how came Varick
to go to that boarding house? Who took him there? I'd like to hear. You
know, don't you?"

Bab laid her napkin on the table and prepared to rise. Her breakfast
she had not finished, but in her growing distaste of her uncle she felt
she must get away. His tone now was not to be misunderstood. It was
very nearly sneering, and yet what motive he had behind his persistence
Bab could not fathom. Uncomfortable, irritated too, she was debating
how she could avoid answering him when a second time that morning
chance came to her rescue.

"Come!" Lloyd was prompting, when she saw her aunt stir uncomfortably.

"Barclay!" Mrs. Lloyd said abruptly. When her husband, not heeding her,
prompted Bab anew, again she spoke, her voice now acute. "Barclay!" she
said; and not even Lloyd, blundering on, could mistake her warning.

"What? Well, what is it?" he returned.

With an almost imperceptible nod Mrs. Lloyd indicated the hall outside.
There in her usual energetic manner Miss Elvira came clumping down
the stairs. Attired in lace and voluminous mid-Victorian brocade, the
_doyenne_ of the Beeston family sailed toward them, burgeoning like
a full-rigged ship. And it was a ship-of-war, too, one observed, its
decks cleared for action! With her eye murky, her turtle-like jaw set
firmly, onward she came, and the course she set was straight toward her
niece's husband.

"Good morning, Bab! Good morning, David!" said Miss Elvira, not looking
at them, however, but straight at Lloyd, Senior. "You two go see your
grandfather; he's asking for you. Hurry, now!" Then, the two in their
wonder hesitating, she waved them to make haste. "Off with you now!"
she ordered. Her eyes still were fixed on her niece's husband, and
Miss Elvira, one saw, was furious.

Halfway up the stairs a fragment of talk reached Bab. It was Miss
Elvira that spoke, and her voice was frigid.

"Last night I warned you to hold your tongue! The next time now it will
be my brother who warns you!"

To whom she said it Bab had no doubt. Lloyd's voice arose then, an
unintelligible mumble. But why did that man need to be warned? What
was it about Varick they were hiding? She looked at David, and he was
frowning thoughtfully. Why? Bab meant to know!




VIII


That Christmas Day's experience, the first with her new-found family,
served as a good index to Bab of what she might expect thereafter from
each of her new relatives. It placed accurately, for one thing, the two
Lloyds--the husband and the wife. Obviously both her aunt and David's
father resented her presence in the house; so that from them, she saw,
she must expect nothing. However, though this were true, the division
of forces showed she had little to fear. On her side were not only Miss
Elvira and her grandfather, there was David Lloyd besides. And of him
and his friendliness every instant she felt surer. Time only added to
her certainty.

Christmas passed swiftly. After that singular encounter with her aunt
and uncle the next event in that eventful day was the morning's visit
to her grandfather. At her entrance a muffled growl arose from the
pillows.

"Well, my girl!" Beeston mumbled; and with a quick movement, his
manner gentle though gruff, he drew down her face to his. Then he
seemed to divine, rather than to see, that David was with her. "Hah,
Davy!" he cried.

David, again teetering on his crutches, lowered himself to the bed.

"Hello, partner!" he returned.

Bab pricked up her ears. Partner, eh? Her grandfather's feeling for
David evidently was different from his feeling for David's father!
Of his fondness for the cripple she had shortly, in fact, a rather
disconcerting proof. Beeston lay there, his dark face lit momentarily
with interest at their talk, when of a sudden she felt his gnarled
fingers shut themselves on hers. Then with his other hand her
grandfather reached out and touched David on the arm.

"Like her, Davy?" he demanded, a jerk of his head denoting Bab.

Startled, she felt herself crimson. David, too, seemed just a bit
embarrassed. Then, the humor of it striking him, he threw back his head
and roared.

"That's a nice question!" he laughed, adding then: "Of course I like
Bab! Every bit of her! Why do you ask?"

A rumbling growl emerged from the depths of the pillows.

"I wanted to make sure," avowed her grandfather, grimly frank.

Flushed and confused, she was thankful when Beeston saw fit to turn to
another topic. The fact is that her new place in life, even with its
vast advantages, she had already begun to find trying. Presently she
was to find it even more so.

Not only that day, it chanced, but for many days to come, a stream of
limousines and smart broughams came trundling up to the Beeston door,
their occupants, with well-bred though not the less eager interest,
curious to have a look at her. Bab's story, it appeared, already was
widely known. Of those who came, though, only a few, the most intimate
of Miss Elvira's cronies, were admitted; but few as they were, to see
them was in each instance an ordeal. Not that they were not kind--they
were--but the girl felt as though she were something on exhibit; and
to this Miss Elvira innocently contributed. Bab had a full share of
good looks, and in addition to this an easy and charming manner; and
of this Miss Elvira seemed with complete satisfaction to herself to be
aware.

"Distinguished--a manner, eh?" she snapped at one of her cronies, an
antiquated dowager who had remarked on Bab's _savoir-faire_. "Well, why
shouldn't she have manner? Wasn't she born a Beeston?"

The dowager agreed hastily. Furthest from her intention was the wish to
combat Vira Beeston in anything. It had been tried; but never had the
result been fortunate.

However, David before long came to Bab's rescue. Having observed the
way his Aunt Vira was promenading Bab before these ancient cronies of
hers, he found occasion to protest vigorously.

"Why not hire a hall?" he suggested. "Why not hire a band, too; and get
a ballyhoo to bark for your show?" Propped up on one crutch, with the
other he began to gesticulate derisively. "Here y' are now, the only
living Beeston heiress in captivity! Have a look, have a look!"

Miss Elvira did her best to scowl.

"David!" she protested.

"That's all right!" he retorted. "How would you like it yourself?" His
aunt hadn't thought of that! "Think how absurd it is too!" he added.
"Why, look at Bab, even she's laughing at you!"

After that when there were callers Bab found herself less frequently
put to the ordeal of what David irreverently termed prancing. Nor
were the callers themselves, even the softest, the most insinuating,
allowed to satisfy in her their thinly veiled craving for the romantic.
David, too, saw to that. At his heels usually was a small, sad-faced,
rowdy-looking Irish terrier, Barney by name. "Sing, Barney!" David
would say, pointing a finger at him; and Barney, lifting his head to
heaven, would sing, "Ow! Ow,! Ow-wow!" One day when a visiting dowager
had made to Bab the brilliantly intelligent remark: "How glad you
must be they found you!" David secretly pointed a finger at Barney.
Instantly Barney responded.

"Ow! Ow! Ow-wow!" he sang. "Ow! Ow-wow!"

"Mercy!" exclaimed the visitor. "What ails the animal?"

"Oh, he's glad too," answered David--"glad, you know, Bab was found!"
Even the dowager had to laugh.

But David always was forgiven. His aunt's cronies all adored him.
Pink-cheeked little old ladies in bonnets would simper and smile and
look arch when he laughed and joked with them; tall, grenadier-like
females, classic dowagers, would titter and shake and look rollicking
when he poked good-natured fun at their foibles. He had, indeed, to him
a human, friendly side that few who came near him could resist; and
day by day Bab felt her liking grow for her crippled cousin--a sunny,
cheerful figure, the most courageous she had ever known. However, that
was but a part of it. As time went on and those first days turned
themselves into weeks Bab began to realize how much David had done
and still was doing for her. His consideration never flagged. His
thoughtfulness seemed instinctive. All his time; indeed, he stood ready
to give to her.

It was a vivid period to her--that first month or so of her new
life. For one thing it made her realize clearly what the power, the
persuasion of wealth like the Beestons' meant. Fifth Avenue, the Fifth
Avenue that would have turned up its nose at Bab the boarding-house
waif, now turned itself inside out for Barbara, old Peter Beeston's
grandchild. Modistes, milliners, bootmakers, all that horde of
outfitters that batten on the rich, swarmed at the Beeston door.
Clothes, hats, gloves, laces, what not were showered upon Bab. She
had music lessons, she had dancing lessons; lessons in French, and in
Italian, too, she took daily. Miss Elvira saw to all this. Bab, indeed,
might have a manner; she might, indeed, be born to it; but even so,
Miss Elvira was still determined there should be no mistake about it.
Bab at times felt as if her head were whirling.

"It's ridiculous!" she protested. "I'm just living my life in hatshops!
What do I need with so many things?" Indeed, as she pointed out,
already she had enough for a dozen débutantes. "You try on that hat!"
Miss Elvira directed grimly, adding that by the time she'd finished
with Bab, Bab would look like someone.

Bab thought so too--either that, or Miss Elvira would destroy them
both. However, all that her aunt did could not compare with the aid
David lent. What he did was invaluable. It was he who first helped Bab
make friends in that big world about them--girls whom he himself knew,
men who were his own friends. Miss Elvira had wished to achieve this by
a single, magnificent coup.

"Why not give a dance?" she suggested; but David put his foot down
firmly. Bab happened to overhear him.

"Don't be an old silly!" he laughed, at the same time playfully
pinching Miss Elvira's cheek. "A dance when she doesn't know a soul?
Why, she'd feel as if she were alone in New York!"

"Well!" retorted his aunt. "What do you expect when you keep her always
to yourself?"

The remark seemed provocative. At any rate after this on every
pretense David went out of his way to have her meet his friends. To
them, it appeared, Bab was for many reasons an object of more than
passing interest. Good taste usually restrained them from probing too
intimately into her past, but when curiosity got the better of them Bab
laughingly revealed what they longed to hear.

One girl in particular seemed deeply interested. She was Linda Blair,
a bizarre, slender creature, tall, with reddish-brown hair and a
thoughtful smile.

"A boarding house!" she exclaimed, incredulous when Bab told her the
nature of Mrs. Tilney's establishment. "Do you really mean it?"

"Oh, yes," returned Bab, amused; "it was the landlady and one of the
boarders who brought me up!"

"Not _really_?" cried the girl, her air shocked. "A clerk and a
boarding-house keeper?"

"They were the two kindest people in the world," returned Bab, and
after a gasp the other recovered herself.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "I didn't understand!"

Bab knew she hadn't.

Kind, pleasant, friendly like himself, these were the friends that
David brought to her. The grim, dark old house after years of silence
awoke again. Young voices were heard within it; there were young folk
roaming its vast dim rooms and halls. Upstairs one day Beeston, its
master, heard unwonted sounds below; and he sat up, frowning curiously.
Not for twenty years had he heard such sounds in his house.

"What's that?" he grumbled.

Miss Elvira happened to be with him.

"It's Barbara," she answered--"she and David. They have some friends
with them."

There was a pause. "Huh," said Beeston. Then: "The old tomb seems
waking up, don't it?" It did, indeed. Now that she had caught her
breath, found the time to look about her and to see what life, this new
and wonderful existence, held in store for her, Bab's spirits soared
buoyantly. And yet even in the midst of it, as the time sped on and
the flitting days had changed themselves into weeks, then into that
first vivid month, a shadow, a little cloud, began all at once to creep
hazily over the spirit of her dream. Varick--where was he? She had not
seen him once! She had not even heard from him! Why?

In those swiftly changing hours, the time that had so swiftly sped,
Bab's greatest delight had been to think that the friends she had
made were his friends too; that this life she was living was his life
also. Eagerly she waited to see him. Eagerly too, as eagerly as she
had wished for that, she had wished to have him see her. Vanity was
no fault of Bab's; but she wanted him to know that the Bab at Mrs.
Tilney's had been transformed, transfigured, into a different sort
of a Bab. As well as Miss Elvira she divined what the new hats, the
new dresses, all these and the rest had done for her. No need to look
in the glass to know that! Already she had seen the eyes, frankly
admiring, that followed her wherever she went. Even David had shown
it! The first night she had walked into the drawing-room, her slender
throat and round, girlish, white shoulders revealed in the first dinner
dress she had ever had on, David had stared. For a long moment he had
gazed; then his lips parted.

"Bab!" he'd cried. "Why, you're lovely!"

At the compliment, breathed low in admiration, the color had crept
faintly into her delicate face, tinting it to a hue lovely in its
contrast with the soft pale ivory of her neck and shoulders. If Varick
only could have seen her then! But Varick apparently had vanished.

After that encounter--her first day's surprising experience with the
Lloyds--it was clear to Bab that she was not the only one toward whom
their feeling was antagonistic. That Varick was included seemed clear.
That he was suspected of something seemed as evident. Nor was that
all. His attitude had itself been curious.

The more she thought of it the more queer seemed his manner when he had
learned of her relationship to the Beestons. What had happened? What
had he done? Why was he no longer welcome in that house? In learning
who she was Bab's first thought had been: "Now I'll see him there! Now
he'll come to see me!" But Varick had not come. However, though he
hadn't, Bab had said nothing to anyone. Not for worlds would she have
shown the ache that day by day, hour by hour, ate gradually into her
heart. It was not like him to have done that. Why had he? Then, finally
she learned!




IX


It was from her grandfather that this revelation came. The holidays had
passed. January with its cold and snow was gone; February followed,
in turn giving way to a mild, spring-like March; and daily gaining
strength, Beeston was up and out of doors. Overwork was the man's chief
trouble; his vitality literally had burned him out. What he needed
was rest, much rest. Every afternoon, tucked up in the corner of a
big motor landau with the top let down, he drove in the park and on
Riverside Drive, Bab and David with him. Bab before long learned to
look forward with pleasure to these excursions.

By now she had lost the feeling of uneasiness that Beeston once had
roused in her; and in its place had risen a deep affection for the
dark, lonely, grim old man. Of his son he no longer asked now, silenced
when once he realized she could tell him nothing; nor did he ever probe
her about her own experiences. The past, it seemed, he had accepted as
a closed book. It was as if he had resolved to rouse no sleeping dogs,
but meant to take out of what was left him of life whatever happiness
it held. Bab, for all his prickly ways, could not have had a kindlier,
more devoted relative. Certainly he let her want for nothing. All that
money meant was hers. Beeston every day made sure of that.

"Happy?" he'd rumble at her.

"Happy!" she'd return.

To see her few indeed would have thought any shadow hovered in her
heart--not David, not Beeston, at any rate. Perched up between them in
the motor, she laughed and chatted, her face radiant, the slim figure
in its furs, its jaunty little toque, a charming, animated picture.
Indeed, with David's gentleness, with her grandfather's gruff, amused
indulgence, there were times when she could almost forget that shadow;
when, in fact, she was forgetfully happy, almost as happy as she
averred.

It was on a day, a ride just such as this, then, that Bab first got
that hint about Varick. That day David had not gone with them. The
Lloyds having closed their town house, transferring themselves to their
country place out on Long Island, David was spending the day there.
Alone with Bab, Beeston all at once grew communicative.

A smile, lurking and sardonic, had crept into his face. Curiously,
though, as Bab was to learn, it was at himself that Beeston smiled.
The man, it appeared, had been trying to do a kindly turn; and this,
the cause of his cynical amusement, seemed to have been no less than
an effort to reward Mrs. Tilney and Mr. Mapleson for what they'd done
for Bab. To his amazement, however, the two had declined, Mrs. Tilney
refusing stiffly, not to say indignantly, the offer made by Beeston's
lawyers, Mr. Mapleson, for his part, growing suddenly agitated.

Bab pricked up her ears. Mr. Mapleson's queerness long had been an old
story with her. Of late, though, in her visits to Mrs. Tilney's, she
had noted he had grown still more queer. Why was it? What had happened
that made them all so queer? Why the last time she had gone there she
had happened suddenly on Mr. Mapleson, and the little man was in tears!
And then, too, that was but a part of it.

"Yes, ran up the stairs!" Beeston was saying, still speaking of Mr.
Mapleson. "The lawyers tell me the man looked downright terrified!"

Bab spoke then. "Dad"--it was thus she called him--"dad," she demanded,
"what's wrong? Why Is it that Mr. Varick never comes to our house? He
used to, you know!"

Varick! At the name she saw a quick gleam spring in Beeston's eyes,
and then, his brows thickening, he scowled. But Bab now had forgotten
caution in her determination to know. Assuredly there must be some good
reason why Varick had avoided her.

"Huh!" said Beeston abruptly. "What difference is it to you what that
fellow does?"

"Only that I like him, dad! That's enough, isn't it?" Bab answered
deliberately; and Beeston, from under his shaggy brows, gave her
another sharp stare.

"Oh, so you like him, eh?" he returned, his eyes lowering. "That's how
the land lies, is it? And why do you like him, let me ask?"

"Why shouldn't I?" Bab retorted quietly. Then without calculating the
consequences of what she said, she added: "So would you have liked him
if he had been as kind, as pleasant as he always was to me!"

The statement seemed to hit Beeston as significant Again his eyes lit
darkly and he gazed at her, his face sneering.

"Huh, I see!" he drawled. "Made love to you, I suppose, down in that
boarding house! Eh? So that's it, is it?" At his brusqueness, the
blunt, brutal frankness of his scorn, Bab felt all the blood in her
body rush hotly into her face. Before she could answer him, however,
Beeston spoke again.

"Yes," he rumbled, "it'd be like a Varick to want to do me dirt!" His
voice came thickly, contempt and hatred bubbling together in his tone.
"You don't know, I suppose, why that fellow's living in that house? Eh?
Well, I'll tell you why. His father set out to trim me and I turned the
tables on him. That's why. Lord!" growled Beeston. "And now, I take
it, the son wants to get back at me! Trying to get you and your money,
isn't he?"

But this, it happened, was too much.

"That's not true!" said Bab. "You shan't say that!"

She would have said more but Beeston, with a scornful laugh, cut her
short.

"You don't think, do you, he'd marry you without your money? If you
do," he sneered, "then why didn't he do it when he had the chance? He
was there in that house with you, wasn't he?"

Each word, as he drawled it slowly at her, seemed barbed with a venom
calculated to destroy. Her face white, Bab heard him in wonder.
Curiously she had no answer. When she tried she could not find the
words. Beeston, leaning forward, tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder.

"Drive home!" he ordered.

Was it true? Was it, indeed, that Varick never would marry her except
that she had money? She knew it was! How could she disguise it? She
herself had said as much in the days when she had been only Bab, Mrs.
Tilney's unknown ward. The words, the phrases of that very thought kept
recurring to her now. A Varick single and living in a boarding house
was far different from a Varick married, living in a four-room Harlem
flat!

That was it, then. If he married her it would be only for her money?
Bab couldn't believe it! He was not that sort. She didn't care who said
it, Varick was not a vulgar fortune hunter. Yes, but if he wasn't, then
why hadn't he married her when she was only Bab--Bab of the boarding
house? Why? Why? Why?

Her face like stone, Bab sat out the remainder of that drive plunged in
those gnawing reflections. Beeston, too, seemed stricken into silence.
His brows drawn together, his murky eyes peering from beneath their
heavy lids, he was slouched down in his seat, staring straight ahead of
him. What visions stalked before him, wraiths of his dead, stormy past,
Bab had no guess; but that hatred stirred thickly in his heart one had
but to see his face to know. Bab, though, gave little heed to that.
Deep in her own heart, too, poison bubbled.

It was true! He never, never would marry her but that she had money!
And if marry her he did, never would she know whether it was for
herself or for her money. She was still thinking of it, mulling it all
over and over in her mind, when the motor rolled up to the Beeston
door. Beeston, leaning heavily on the footman's arm, alighted. Bab,
still plunged in reflection, sat where she was.

"You coming in?" her grandfather demanded.

Bab shook her head. She had something to do, she said; and saying no
more Beeston turned away. She watched him hobble up the stairs and,
still on the footman's arm, disappear indoors. Then when he was gone,
when the door was shut and the servant had returned to the car, Bab, as
the man touched his hat to her, sat up, suddenly alert. She knew what
she must do.

"Drive to Mrs. Tilney's," she said.




X


The window was open, letting in a flood of the spring day's mellow
sunshine, and the leaves of Mr. Mapleson's geraniums in their boxes
on the sill quivered delicately in the breeze. There was a lily, too,
standing in a dish beside them; and as the air stirred its stalk and
slender, rapier-like leaves, they gracefully curved themselves, nodding
and curtsying like a maiden. Outside the clocks had just finished
striking six.

Mr. Mapleson sat on the bed; and with his chin in his hands, his
shoulders sunken, he gazed vacantly at the wall. Never had his lined
face looked so gray, so furrowed; never had it seemed so worn. Age in
the last few weeks, it seemed, had told heavily on the little man.

At Mrs. Tilney's the boarders had not only seen this, but had noted
more than one other change in him. His shy, friendly voice no longer
joined in the talk at the dinner table; his timid, frosty little giggle
no more was heard to echo their merriment. Banquo at the feast indeed
could not have been more dejected. Submerged, downcast, detached, he
had altered utterly in the brief two months since Christmas.

What it was that weighed on the little man's mind was of course not
known to the others. But Mr. Mapleson knew. And it was this knowledge
that had worn on him so destructively. Even now at the thought his face
grew full of pain; and as he raised a hand to draw it across his brow a
penetrating sigh escaped him. "Oh, God!" said Mr. Mapleson.

He was still sitting there, the tragic simpleton, that sentimentalist,
when of a sudden a quick footfall, a step he well remembered, sounded
in the hall. Then a hand rapped swiftly on the door.

The limousine bearing Bab to Mrs. Tilney's had come swiftly; as a
matter of fact, for her it had come too swiftly. Uptown, when she had
made up her mind, she had felt so sure, so certain. The thing to do,
she had been convinced up there, was to see Mr. Mapy; he would set
everything right. Yes, but now that she had come, what was it he was to
set right? What was it he or anyone else could do? She confessed she
didn't know.

Beeston's sneering, contemptuous speeches still rang echoing in her
ears. Even had they been true, the affront in those utterances could
not have been more stinging. And again, how did she know they weren't
true? A vulgar fortune hunter Beeston had termed him; and what reason
had she to believe he wasn't? To be sure, he had neither asked her to
marry him nor openly made love to her; but then how did she know he
wouldn't if once he got the chance? That was it--if once he got the
chance!

"Oh, Mr. Mapy!" called Bab. "Oh, Mr. Mapy!"

Closing his door she stood there smiling wistfully.

The little man's face was a picture. Amazement and alarm together
struggled in it--alarm most of all. Then of a sudden, as if from the
cloud in her eyes he divined something, Mr. Mapleson scrambled to his
feet.

"What is it?" he wheezed, and caught thickly at his breath. "Bab, they
haven't sent you away?"

Sent her away? What in the world did he mean?

"Don't you understand?" she faltered; "I needed someone to talk to; I
had to come to you! Aren't you glad to see me, Mr. Mapy?"

Mr. Mapleson wet his lips. Whatever it was that had troubled him seemed
again to have laid its burden on his soul; for when he spoke it was
with difficulty, his words clacking brokenly between his teeth.

"Then nothing's happened--nothing up there? They are kind to you? You
are happy?" A half-dozen questions came dragging from his lips. After
that, of a sudden Mr. Mapleson held out his pipelike arms to her. "Bab,
Bab!" he cried. "Tell me you are happy!"

"Oh, happy enough!" she answered dully.

Then she told him what she herself had been told. After that what
happened at Mrs. Tilney's was swift.

       *       *       *       *       *

That evening, as Varick came down the stairs to the L road station on
the corner and trudged briskly up the side street toward Mrs. Tilney's,
a curious thing occurred. Across the way, as he approached, two men had
come out from the shadow of a doorway; and after a sharp glance at him
they had followed him, matching their step to his. The night before,
the same thing had happened, and the night before that too. What was
more, when he had left the bank a moment that morning he had seen one
of the pair standing on a corner across Broad Street. What did they
want with him? It hardly could have been a coincidence, his seeing
them; for on reaching his room he drew the curtain to look and they
still were there. Just then a hand rapped at Varick's door; and his
face grim, curiously thoughtful, he turned away from the window.

"I beg pardon," said Mr. Mapleson. His manner hurried, he looked about
him sharply. "You are alone?" he inquired. "You have a moment you can
spare?"

Varick stared at him fixedly. His expression was, in fact, singularly
hard and penetrating for one of his usual kindliness; and when he spoke
his tone, too, was no less uncompromising.

"What do you want, Mr. Mapleson?" he asked.

The little man, it seemed, was not to be rebuffed.

"You must come with me!" he said. "You must come with me for a moment!"
Catching Varick by the arm he half led, half tugged him down the hall.
Then having reached his own door he paused, at the same time peering up
at Varick like a little gnome.

"Be kind! Oh, be kind!" whispered Mr. Mapleson; and with this, having
thrust open the door, he pushed Varick into the room, then closed the
door behind him. Afterward, wandering along the hall, Mr. Mapleson sat
down on the stairs.

It was a queer sight, the picture that slight, insignificant figure
made huddled there in the dimness of the hall. A ray of light from the
gas jet overhead fell upon his face, and Mr. Mapleson, one saw, was
smiling rapturously. It was as if all were well now. It was as if, as
in the fairy tale, all were to live happy ever afterward. But Mr. Mapy,
it appeared, had counted without his host. Perhaps ten minutes had
passed, certainly not more than fifteen at the most, and he was still
sitting there, his face radiant, when behind him the door suddenly was
thrown open. Bab spoke then, and as he heard her Mr. Mapleson got up
hurriedly. Both in tone and in manner she seemed abrupt.

"No, no, you've said enough!" said Bab. "I won't hear you!"

Mr. Mapleson's face fell.

"Why, why!" he exclaimed. "What is it?"

Bab went straight toward him, toward the stairs.

"I'm going," she said, and her voice was like steel. "I'm going," said
Bab, saying it between her teeth, and over her shoulder she gave Varick
at the same time a look. Its air of disdain Mr. Mapleson did not miss.
Neither did he miss the break in her voice, a note of hurt, of outrage,
and nervously he put out his hand to halt her. "No, don't stop me!" she
said, and pushed his hand aside. "It's true! It's true what they told
me about him! He's just what they said he was!"

Varick's face was like a mask. He did not speak; he made no effort, so
much as by a look, even to answer her.

Again after a glance at him Mr. Mapleson stammered: "What is it? Why,
what is it?"

Bab answered with a laugh.

"Ask him!" she said; that was all. The next instant she had gone
hurrying down the stairs. Then presently, far below, the street door
slammed. At the sound, his eyes still on Varick's, Mr. Mapleson
shuddered involuntarily.

"What is it?" once more he whispered. "Tell me what you've done."

Varick's face did not alter.

"I tried to save her," he said; "I did my best I asked her to marry me."

"To save her?" echoed the little man, and a gasp escaped him. "To save
her!"

Varick's face grew still harder.

"Mapleson, are you mad or what is it? My soul, man; whatever in the
world possessed you?"

Mr. Mapleson's jaw dropped suddenly. Again the last vestige of color
fled from his furrowed face. He gaped at Varick like one bemused.

"What do you mean?" he whispered.

Varick said it then.

"I've found you out, Mapleson! You had those letters, didn't you?
You gave those lawyers their proofs. It was you, wasn't it, who got
together all those papers?"

Yes, it was Mr. Mapleson who had done all this, but still he did not
speak. It was as if his tongue, paralyzed, cleaved to the roof of his
mouth.

"Well," said Varick, "they were all forgeries! You forged them, John
Mapleson. You cooked them all up yourself! Bab is no more Beeston's
grandchild than I am!"

Mr. Mapleson did not even deny it.

"Hush!" he whispered, his voice appalled. "What if they should find
out! Think what they'd do to her!"




XI


And there you are! Forger and fraud, jailbird too--all these, as Varick
charged, Mr. Mapleson had been. Bab, indeed, was no more old Peter
Beeston's grandchild than was the little man himself.

That night the dinner hour came and went disregarded; time sped and
midnight drew near before the colloquy in Mrs. Tilney's top-floor back
had ended. Mr. Mapleson admitted everything, bit by bit laying bare
the whole of that tragic farce, the story of his past. And what a tale
it was! Grotesque you'd call it, an outlandish, ludicrous affair,
and yet of a pathos, banal as it was, one could not mistake. For Mr.
Mapleson was not by nature in any way a criminal. Neither had he become
a jailbird in seeking to serve his own ends. That was his story. Not
once but twice the little man had become a forger, and each time he had
forged only to help others. It had never been for himself.

"You mean you got nothing!" questioned Varick.

"I!" cried Mapleson. His tone was not only surprised, it was resentful.
"Certainly not!" he said.

"Good Lord!" Varick murmured.

Absurd as it was, though, Varick could not overlook or disregard the
fact that what Mr. Mapleson had done had its sinister side. Not above a
week had passed when out of a clear sky the first bolt descended. Fraud
and forgery, sad to say, seldom lack effect.

At one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon--it was the first half-holiday
in April--Varick slammed shut the covers of the ledger he was working
on and, his task finished for the day, donned his hat and hurried out
into Broad Street. The day was glorious. A mild breeze was stirring,
while from overhead, pouring down between the cañon-like walls of the
skyscrapers, a burst of sunshine filled all the neighborhood with
light. Its radiance contrasted vividly with the lower city's usual
dingy dimness, though Varick gave little heed to that. He bustled
onward, his face grim. Even when across the street a man stepped out
from a doorway and followed him, matching his step to Varick's, he
gave it scant attention. To be watched, to be followed, was not any
novelty now. It neither worried him nor made him wonder why he was the
subject of that espionage. The night before, shoved under his door
at Mrs. Tilney's, he had found the card of no less a person than his
one-time friend, David Lloyd. "I'd like to see you," was penciled on
the back. But until that morning, some time after he had reached the
bank, the full significance of the card and its message had not dawned
on him.

Why did David Lloyd wish to see him? It was a year since the two had
last met, and the friendship that Varick himself had at that time
broken up he meant David to see never would be renewed. No Beeston,
nor any kin of Beeston, should be a friend of his. He would arrange
for that. Blunt, brusque, in fact, he had said good-by, then turned
abruptly on his heel, leaving David Lloyd staring after him. This,
however, was not the point. Though Varick often had regretted that
day's harshness, he had still made no overtures. Neither by word nor by
sign had he given the least hint that he wished to end the feud.

So what was the meaning of that card? What was it David Lloyd wished
of him? It was not until nearly noon that a thought came to him. Then
with a staggering certitude the suspicion flashed into his mind. Mr.
Mapleson! Had the Lloyds heard something? Was the fraud already known?
As murder will out, so, too, would a thing like that cry itself from
the housetops.

"My soul!" said Varick to himself. "If they should know!"

That was why he had hurried homeward--to find out if they had. All the
way uptown in the crawling L road train he sat mulling over in his mind
the tale he had dragged piecemeal out of Mr. Mapleson. Across the aisle
a pair of girls, office workers evidently, gave him an appraising look,
frankly appreciative; then they began to giggle and whisper together,
their eyes stealing consciously toward him. But Varick did not heed.

It was a queer tale--that story he had heard from Mr. Mapleson. He
hailed, it appeared, from a town in western New York--Buckland, a
village near Rochester. Here the little man had come of sound stock, a
line of God-fearing, sturdy men, of thrifty, virtuous women. Of the
man's family, however, only one besides himself survived. This was
a married sister, and to her Mr. Mapleson owed the first of his two
forgeries, a crime that had sent him to state's prison, and that he had
committed to save her from dishonor and her husband from disgrace.

The sister's husband, it appeared, was a politician. He was,
furthermore, like many of his ilk, smug, self-satisfied, selfish
and dishonest. One might guess offhand his part in the tale. Some
countyroad funds having fallen into his hands, the fellow had
appropriated them, and then, unable to repay and in imminent peril of
exposure, he had appealed in terror to his wife. She, in turn, appealed
with a like terror to her brother.

One may picture the little man's trembling horror. One may picture,
too, his shame. To clear the politician, however, fifteen hundred
dollars must be had forthwith; and not having that much, Mr. Mapleson
had obtained the amount in the only way he knew how--by forgery. He
endorsed a check, the property of his employer. And the employer had
been Beeston!

It was there, in fact, working in Beeston's office as a clerk, that
Mr. Mapleson had obtained the information he later put to use in his
second forgery. He knew Beeston's son--Randolph Beeston that was. He
had known, too, of the man's surreptitious marriage.

At the time of his first offense he had salved his conscience with the
usual sophistries. It was a loan, he had whispered to himself. It would
be returned at once. He had indeed paid back all but a few dollars when
an accident exposed him. No excuse availed then; and the joke of it,
too, was that when once his disgrace became public the politician, with
characteristic effrontery, publicly disowned him! Thus broken, beaten,
outraged, he had served a five-years' penalty; and emerging from jail,
he had renounced not only his family but all else that connected him
with the unhappy past. The day he had come forth from Sing Sing was, in
fact, the day he first had shown himself at Mrs. Tilney's. And then?

There were those first years of Mr. Mapleson's stay in the boarding
house. There was the coming, too, of that unknown woman--the widowed
girl mother and her child; then the mother's death. Lonely and
shy, a man at heart as tender as a woman, the child thus brought to
Mr. Mapleson had given him all the love and tenderness that life
theretofore seemed to have denied him. And comforted by it, with all
that child's affection to cheer him, to heal the hurt he had felt, Mr.
Mapleson had sought in every way to repay Bab for all she had been to
him. The forgery, his second effort, was a guaranty of this.

"Diamonds and pearls!" That had been his promise. However, it was not
merely to get these that the fraud had been committed. Bab's interest
in Varick, the newcomer at Mrs. Tilney's, Mr. Mapleson had been quick
to see. Beeston beginning then to advertise for news of his long-lost
son, the little man had grasped at the chance of a desperate coup.
Bab's people he had not found. What is more, he knew he never would.
The story the mother herself had suggested--that she was a widow, that
she had come to New York to earn a living, that neither she nor her
husband had any kin left living--all this, Mr. Mapleson had assured
himself, must be true. His fraud, therefore, had been deliberate. How
in his cracked wits, though, he hoped to succeed with it, who knows
or who can tell? It is enough that he not only had tricked the Beeston
lawyers but, shrewd as Mrs. Tilney was, had managed to cozen her as
well. And Bab had been entrenched in the Beeston household as firmly,
it seemed, as if she had been born there.

But now---- Across the car aisle the two girls giggling and whispering
there paused to nudge each other as Varick abruptly arose. Little
wonder too! As the guard called his station and he wandered toward
the door he had wrung his brows into a scowl, a frown of gathering
disquiet. Why had that card been put beneath his door? What was it
the Beestons knew? Had they so soon discovered the fraud, or was the
message no more than a coincidence? It seemed to Varick inconceivable
that David Lloyd should have sought him for any but the one reason. And
yet why him? That in itself was startling. Why apply to him? Why not
apply to the man responsible? Why?

With a swift look, turning as he left the car, Varick glanced behind
him. Yes, he still was followed! That man, his shadow, still was there!
He sped on toward Mrs. Tilney's, and, racing up the steps, was panting
softly as he shut the street door behind him.

Why were they following him? Why had David Lloyd come to Mrs. Tilney's?
More than that, if they knew, what was to happen to Bab? A moment later
Varick rapped at Mr. Mapleson's door.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Pine Street real-estate office that employed Mr. Mapleson at
twenty-eight dollars a week, and long had thought these wages high,
still further added to a reputation for free-handed generosity by
making each Saturday in the spring and summer a half-holiday for their
employees. These for years had been the joy of the little man's life.
Swiftly he would put his desk in order, breathe a timid good-day to his
fellow-clerks, then speed on his way uptown. There Bab would be waiting
him.

The years had made little change. She had always been there--in the
beginning as the Bab that Mr. Mapy had first known, the child in
pigtails and pinafores, hanging over the gate and waving wildly when
she saw him coming; then as a little bigger, a little older Bab, a
stilty-legged young one who came running up the street to meet him.
As soon as Mr. Mapleson had bolted luncheon, gobbling in his haste,
he and Bab would sally forth, the man almost as eager as the child,
bound together for an afternoon in the Park. Pennies in those days were
scarce with the little man, but somehow he still managed to find enough
for a voyage in the swan boats, a trip or two in the goat wagons, a mad
whirl on the merry-go-round. "Who's got the brass ring? Ride again!"
The first time Bab, by skill of arms, speared the treasured prize, Mr.
Mapy was nearly beside himself with excitement.

"Who's got the brass ring? Why, she has!" he cried indignantly when the
master of ceremonies monotonously chanted his cry. "My little girl's
got it, of course!" snorted Mr. Mapy.

But time flies. There came a year when the carrousel even, with its
gilded, splendid steeds, its giraffes, its stages, its flying dragons,
gave way to other charms, more sedate, older, more grown up. On
Saturdays then, Bab and Mr. Mapy wandered elsewhere, Bab now a slender,
slim thing with dresses let down to her boot tops. It was to picture
galleries and places like that, theaters too, that they now went,
to see a good play that Mr. Mapy beforehand had made sure was good.
For the little man, peculiar as he might be, in one respect had no
delusions. Whether or not Bab fell heir to her diamonds and pearls,
Mr. Mapleson meant her to grow up into a clean-minded, healthy-headed
woman--the kind that looks you quietly in the face, clean, unafraid,
as clear-eyed as Diana. She should be good, whatever else, vowed Mr.
Mapy; and though the term be homely, as homely as his ambition, there
is somehow about it a nobility at which even the most cynical of us may
not sneer. _Ave_, John Mapleson! _Salutamus!_

What times the two had then! "Hah! th' play's the thing!" he'd cry,
stirred, his face alight at some rousing scene that had depicted
virtue victorious and villainy put to rout. "Hah, I told you so!" It
made Bab smile to see him. On the other hand, if on the stage things
went wrong with some poor girl or some noble fellow was in jeopardy,
Mr. Mapy would sit almost breathless, silenced, waiting until all was
well. Bab more than once had seen the tears steal down the little man's
gray face. However, once the suspense had passed, once all was as it
should be, Mr. Mapy, his spirits rising at a bound, would bubble with
animation. "Great! Wasn't it great! Was ever anything so fine!" For a
week he and Bab would talk it over, discussing every scene; then the
Saturday half-holiday would come again, and there would be another
matinée.

Little wonder Mr. Mapy so eagerly waited from week to week. It was his
joy. It was the one great, true pleasure of that marred, broken life
of his. And when heads began to turn, eyes to glance, lighting with
admiration at the slim, tender girl, the young woman now, who went with
him on these Saturdays, little Mr. Mapleson's heart fairly bounded,
swelling with pride, with loving satisfaction.

  Of all the days that's in the week
    I dearly love but one day----

If he who wrote that ballad had only made it Saturday!

So thought John Mapleson at any rate. So, too, in the passage of all
those years, never once had he let anything stand in the way of that
holiday. There was Bab, hanging over the gate, waiting in her pigtails
to wave to him. Then there was the stilty-legged little Bab riding
the gilded carrousel, scream-ing with delight when she speared the
treasured brass ring. And then, finally, there was Bab the blue-eyed
and slender, the white-faced little old man's charming companion--the
Bab whom people, smiling in admiration, turned their heads to see. All
these, Mr. Mapy! Yes, but where was Bab now? It was a Saturday, yet she
was not with him. He wondered with a rising terror what had happened.
Where was she? What had befallen her?

He was still sitting there, his chin fallen on his breast, when he
heard Varick's step upon the stair. A moment later there came his
knock. With trembling knees the little man arose, and shambling across
the room, he unlocked and opened the door.

"Well?" he asked monotonously.

In the week, the few days that had intervened since the night when he
had dragged out of Mr. Mapleson his story, Varick's anger at the little
man had drained itself away. For what good now could anger do? After
all, too, if it were indeed forgery that Mr. Mapleson had set his hand
to, there was no meanness in that fraud. It was merely the impulse of
an unbalanced mind. Varick, after he had closed the door behind him,
walked quietly across the room. Mr. Mapleson at his approach turned to
him, trembling.

"What do you want?" he asked. "I have told you everything, haven't I?"

"Listen to me," said Varick. "There was a man here yesterday to see me,
and I want to know why. You're not hiding anything, are you? Have these
people uptown found out?"

"Found out?" repeated Mr. Mapleson. He gazed at Varick, his face dull,
uncomprehending. "What do you mean?'

"Let me tell you something," said Varick, and he laid a hand on Mr.
Mapleson's shoulder. "I see you don't know, but for ten days I have
been followed--I, you understand! I have not told you before because I
was not certain. Now I know. For ten days two men have been watching
me!"

"Watching you?" echoed Mr. Mapleson. It was evident he still did not
grasp what the fact conveyed. "Why should they watch you?" he faltered.
"Why are they not watching me?"

Varick shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

"They probably are," he answered; "probably they are following all
of us!" Then he added sharply: "But that's not the point! Don't you
understand, they've found out! Uptown those people know!"

Mr. Mapleson was still staring at him as if bemused.

"Found out--they?" he faltered. "Why do you think so?" Then as Varick
sternly gazed at him Mr. Mapleson put out an appealing hand.

"Please!" he said, and smiled wearily. "I am very tired and I cannot
think. For her sake be a little kind. Won't you tell me now how you
know?"

So Varick told him. The card David Lloyd had left could have had but
one significance. David knew something. For that, for no other reason,
would he have come there to Mrs. Tilney's. He had meant to ask Varick
what he knew.

A sigh, a deep breath, escaped Mr. Mapleson.

"No, you are wrong," he said heavily. "I know why he came. She brought
him here with her."

"Bab brought him!" repeated Varick, wondering.

Mr. Mapleson nodded slowly. She had brought David to see him, but the
significance of this Varick could not see. It merely struck him as odd,
yet why odd he could not have told. After all why shouldn't she? She
knew nothing of the fraud. With equal propriety she might have brought
any of her supposed relatives to see the little man.

"What are you going to do?" asked Mr. Mapleson.

He was gazing at Varick, his air intent. Again Varick looked at him
with wonder.

"Do?" he repeated.

What was there to do? To him at any rate it was evident that those
people either knew or suspected, so what could he do but wait? Bab
could not be saved. He had tried and failed.

"You mean you'll do nothing?" persisted Mr. Mapleson. Once more his
voice rose shrilly. "But you must!" he cried, adding: "It was for you I
did what I did--because of you, Mr. Varick! I felt you cared for her;
I thought you would be up there with her watching out for her! I told
myself that with you near her I need have no fear! What is it now?
Don't you love her? Are you going to stand by idle and let whatever
happens happen? I cannot believe it, Mr. Varick!"

Varick waited until the outburst was at an end.

"I can do nothing," he said. "After what that man Beeston's done to me
you know I can't go into that house! Besides that, you know I asked her
to marry me, and you heard what she answered. When she comes back here
I'll ask her again. That won't be long, I'm certain!"

Mr. Mapleson fairly bubbled over.

"Till she comes back!" he shrilled. "Till she comes back! I tell you
she'll never come back. Don't you understand?"

Varick heard in sudden wonder. Before he could speak, though, Mr.
Mapleson's voice rose to a shriller, keener pitch.

"I say she'll never come back! You've let her stay up there alone,
never going near her, and now that fellow Lloyd wants her. That's why
she brought him here--it was for me to see him. She'll marry him before
you know it!" Then with a gesture of irrepressible misery and despair
Mr. Mapleson seized him by the arm. "What are you going to do?" he
demanded.

"I don't know," said Varick, "but I'll tell you this. If anything
happens I'll be there with her!"




XII


In that gay world of leisure that lies in and round the throbbing
artery of uptown Fifth Avenue, time ordinarily flits by as if on
hurrying wings; but with Bab, it happened, the fortnight that followed
dragged as if every hour plodded on leaden feet.

April had come, and one afternoon early in the month half-past one had
just struck when Hibberd, the Beestons' second man, padding softly up
the stairs, knocked on the door of her sitting-room. In his discreet,
deferent voice, the tone of the well-trained manservant, he announced,
"Luncheon is served, please." Laying down the book in her hand, Bab
arose. It would not do to say she had been reading; she hadn't. The
thoughts running in her mind left little room for anything else. And
in these thoughts there was little to comfort her. What had happened,
she began to feel, was exactly what might have been expected. Had she
not been warned? How, indeed, could the whole thing have been made
plainer than in the way Beeston had put it to her! It was thus, feeding
on itself, that the suspicion roused by Beeston's slurs had gone on
growing, a condition that certain remembrances of her own had in no way
improved.

She saw it all now--or so she thought. She remembered, for example,
that time now long past when she first had noted Varick's rising
interest in her. If then he had not openly made love, still his
attitude was next door to it! Had he ever lost a chance to be with
her? Had he once omitted the opportunity to make himself singularly
pleasant? Bab was sure, quite sure, he had not. He had, in short,
amused himself at every occasion! For what else but amusement could
it be called? Her good looks had always sufficed to interest him, but
not until he knew one day she would have money had he ever taken her
seriously.

Day by day her resentment had grown. Day by day, too, she had learned
to find in it a kind of styptic balm, a bitter salve for the hurt she
first had felt. However, that hurt was passing now; and as Bab arose
to make ready for luncheon her spirits manifestly had improved. A new
color had come to her cheeks, a new buoyancy to her step. It was as
if the harvest of her thoughts this morning had at last brought to
her a decision long debated, and that now, once she had reached this
conclusion, the shadow had been swept resolutely from her mind.

"Never mind my hat, Mawson," Bab told the angular, bony-faced
Englishwoman Miss Elvira had provided to wait on her. "I'll run up for
it after luncheon."

"Very good, miss," replied the maid; and her eyes alight with their
new animation, perhaps just a little hard, too, Bab hurried down the
stairs. Rarely had she looked so self-poised.

That afternoon she was to drive out in a new motor, a racing runabout
David Lloyd had just bought; and as she passed swiftly down the long
stairway Bab was humming under her breath a familiar bar of music. It
was by chance an air that once she had heard someone she knew whistling
gayly:

  La Donna è mobile!

And singularly, at the remembrance, she smiled as if lightly amused.
But then that is the way of it:

  Quam plume mal vento!

She was, indeed, still singing it as she slipped into the living-room,
on her way down, to help herself to a flower or two out of a big
bunch that stood in a vase on the table. David that morning had sent
them to her, and she knew how his face would light when he saw her
wearing them. Of late she had begun to notice rather definitely how
readily she could please him. And he, too, pleased her. She had not
dreamed that one's own cousin--just a relative, you know--could seem
always so charming. But then there was a gentleness, a kindliness and
consideration about David that endeared him to everyone. Bab, by the
time she had reached the dining-room, seemed much like her smiling,
pleasant self again.

At the foot of the luncheon table, ensconced behind a huge, hissing,
silver tea-urn, sat Miss Elvira. Her turtle-like jaw was at the
moment set squarely. Near by stood David's father, and with him was
Mrs. Lloyd. Bab, since that memorable Christmas morning when they'd
plied her with their questions about Varick, had seen the two only
occasionally, and always in Miss Elvira's presence. However, even thus
guarded, the Lloyds somehow still had managed to convey to her a subtle
sense of their dislike, so that Bab long had learned to watch for them
with disquiet. What was it they had against her? Why were they not
like David? Once or twice she had been tempted to appeal to Mrs. Lloyd
herself. She was not only Bab's aunt, Bab told herself, she was David's
mother too. And could not she see how fond David was of his cousin? But
Bab had never made that appeal.

As time progressed and her stay in the house turned into weeks, then
months, Bab had seen the air of aloofness they displayed grow more
marked. Not that they were ever openly rude. But their politeness, the
man's especially, had in it something feline, so that gradually the
impression grew on Bab that she was being played with, that beneath the
velvety paws keen claws were hidden. She could not understand it. Why
did they shrink so from her? As she entered the room Lloyd, starting
awkwardly, gave his wife a quick, covert signal of warning. Evidently
they had just been talking of her. Miss Elvira looked up, then smiled.

"Well, dear," she murmured aimlessly.

Lloyd, after glancing at the clock, drew out his watch and studied
it. Things like this were as near as he came to being rude, but now,
it happened, Bab had begun to notice the occurrences. "Four minutes,
past!" remarked Lloyd, his tone suggestive; then as crisply he added:
"The _soufflé_ will be ruined!"

Miss Elvira looked up swiftly.

"Then don't eat it!" she rejoined; whereat Mr. Lloyd, withdrawing his
pale eyes from Bab, gave his wife's aunt a sudden inquiring stare. If
he'd planned a retort, however, he instantly reconsidered it. Miss
Elvira's mien at the moment did not encourage liberties. Bab all at
once was aware something must have occurred. There was an air of
tension evident.

At the head of the table old Beeston already had taken his place.
Shrugged back in his seat, his gnarled, powerful hands clutching the
arms of his chair, he stared fixedly in front of him. His son-in-law
he did not seem to see, nor for that matter did he pay much heed to
his daughter. It was as if alone and detached he absorbed himself in
dour, dark reflection, his sullen, forceful eyes fixed on the vision,
whatever it was, that drifted at the moment across the changeful mirror
of his mind.

"Hello, dad," murmured Bab.

She paused, bending over his chair, and with both hands patted him
on either cheek. Una and the Lion! A grunt escaped him, a deepening
rumble, and then the man's dark face, Indian in its swartness, lighted
into one of its rare, grudging smiles.

"Hullo, you!" he returned.

Between the two, one saw, all was well again.

Across the room Lloyd had not missed this little by-play. As he seated
himself, then picked up his napkin, he shot a covert look at his wife.
Mrs. Lloyd, however, was engrossed with Aunt Elvira. It had been
planned to give Bab a dance, her first, the week following, and Mrs.
Lloyd seemed just to have heard of it. Possibly this accounted for the
rather unusual interest she showed.

Beeston suddenly spoke.

"Where's Davy?" he demanded.

"'E'll be down presently, sir. 'E's dressing," the butler informed him.
With Hibberd, the second man, Crabbe stood at attention, and bending
forward Beeston knocked abruptly on the table. At the signal all but
Lloyd became silent.

"A dance?" he was saying. "You giving a dance?"

Beeston, bent forward, had lowered his head; but as his son-in-law's
voice raised itself he looked up, his slumberous eyes, in their dark,
fierce latency, burning on the speaker. Lloyd in his affected, clipping
tone still babbled on.

"Fancy giving a dance to people here!"

With a shock that made the glass and silver ring Beeston's fist struck
upon the table.

"Silence!" he said.

He did not raise his voice; he did not need to. The word, spoken with
a slow, unhurried evenness, the man's usual rumbling monotone, seemed
to crash down upon and obliterate Lloyd much as if he had been hit
by a landslide. Shamed and conscious he tugged furiously at his pale
mustaches, at the same time glancing guiltily at the two menservants.
His eyes, when again they returned to his father-in-law, were hard,
angry, resentful. But Beeston did not heed.

"Bless Thou, O Lord, this, food to our use; and make humble our hearts
within us. Amen." Then, sitting back abruptly, he stretched out a hand
to the glass in front of him. "Some of the '88 Canary, Crabbe; I'll
have it with my soup."

Bab raised her eyes. She had been aware of Beeston's opinion of his
son-in-law; but behind his contemptuous disdain she detected now an
impulse she had not known before--a vindictive wrath, a fury only
half hidden. Of that tension in the room Bab from the first had been
aware, and now she realized Lloyd must have been the cause of it. What
had he been doing? Wondering, she was still sitting there, wrapped in
silence, when Mrs. Lloyd broke the uncomfortable pause. About Mrs.
Lloyd's bored, impassive voice there was often a sort of disdainful,
purring inflection that Bab heard with disquiet. Ordinarily it signaled
something disagreeable. Turning to Miss Elvira, Mrs. Lloyd smiled
vaguely.

"You haven't told me yet--has that card been sent?"

"What card?" Miss Elvira looked up sharply. Then almost at the same
instant she seemed to comprehend. "The card to--to---- You mean the one
we were talking about?" Her air was obviously uneasy. Beeston, too,
seemed interested, for his eye lighted and he glanced sideways at his
daughter. Mrs. Lloyd was still smiling vaguely.

"Yes," she returned, "the card for that young man. I'm curious to learn
whether he would accept."

Miss Elvira did not reply. In frosty silence she busied herself about
the tea-urn; but as Bab sat listening, her interest mildly awakened,
she saw Miss Elvira glance swiftly toward her, then away, a signal
evidently for the benefit of Mrs. Lloyd. But Mrs. Lloyd, it seemed, had
some purpose behind her veiled, vague speeches. She, too, cast a glance
at Bab.

"I suggest we send the invitation. At the most he could only refuse. If
he accepted we might by chance learn his true attitude toward us."

"Ethel!"

It was Miss Elvira that spoke. Like her brother, she did not raise her
voice; neither did she much change its tone. But even so Miss Elvira
managed to convey with it a significant something not to be overlooked.
Mrs. Lloyd, who was just about to speak again, paused. However, after
an inquiring look she began anew: "As I was saying----"

"One lump or two, Ethel?" Miss Elvira abruptly interrupted.

"What? Oh, why two, please. As I was saying----"

"Cream?" asked Miss Elvira.

"Please. As I said----"

"Hibberd, hand me the toast," Miss Elvira again interposed.

In mild wonder Hibberd said there was no toast--should he order some
sent up? No, it was not worth while; Miss Elvira did not need it so
much as that.

"Cream and sugar, Barbara?" she inquired.

"Yes, please, Aunty Vi," returned Bab. Her aunt's strategy she had not
missed. It added to her growing curiosity. Something was going on.

Mrs. Lloyd again glanced at her husband. The two having exchanged a
look, Mrs. Lloyd once more applied herself to her aunt. Some strong
resolution seemed now to have armed her with determination.

"Aunt Vira, I was just speaking to you," she announced.

Without looking up from the teacups Miss Elvira murmured, "Were you?"

"I asked you," returned Mrs. Lloyd, "whether you'd sent that
invitation."

"Yes, I heard you perfectly," Miss Elvira replied calmly.

"Well?"

"Well, what?" was the rejoinder.

An impasse evidently! Obviously the question Mrs. Lloyd seemed so
determined to have answered Miss Elvira was just as determined she
wouldn't answer. Bab's bewilderment grew. She had a curious feeling
that somehow she had intimately to do with the matter, though what it
was, so far she had not the slightest inkling. Why should anyone's
presence at her dance disclose that person's motives? And the motives,
what were they? She was still wondering, her face puckered into a
frown, when she heard the thump of David's crutches in the hall, and a
moment later David himself appeared at the door.

"Hello, everyone!" he greeted.

Passing toward his chair, he halted long enough to give his grandfather
a friendly tap on the shoulder.

"Hello, you!" Beeston growled amiably.

Crabbe had pulled out the chair next to Bab's, and David, having handed
the butler his crutches, skillfully sat himself down. Then, as soon as
Crabbe had turned away, David reached over surreptitiously and gave
Bab's hand an affectionate pat.

"Well, Babs," he remarked.

The color stole faintly into Bab's face and her eyes lighted, animated
now that she had him there to talk to. Just as she was about to speak
David seemed to divine the trouble in the air.

"I say, what's the row?" he asked abruptly.

There was a moment's pause. Then, as if determined to force matters to
a finish, Mrs. Lloyd spoke.

"There's no row. I wish you wouldn't use such words! I merely asked
your Aunt Vira a question. I wished to know whether she'd sent a
card"--she glanced, as she spoke, at Bab--"an invitation to Bayard
Varick!"

Varick? Bab heard the name in vague astonishment. So he was the man
they'd been discussing? Yes, but why all Mrs. Lloyd's strange interest
in him? Why all her curiosity concerning Varick's attitude? Did all
this concern her--Bab? Was that it?

She sat there outwardly unmoved, her face inexpressive of the tumult
that went on within her. Strangely, it was not of the motives she
thought. In her mind ran rioting another thought--a thought that
shouted clamorously, its mockery evident. A party and Varick at it? Her
party too? With that vividly clear-cut minuteness of detail that mental
conflict so often engenders, a memory, a vision leaped into her mind
and stood there, graphic, boldly limned.

It was in Mrs. Tilney's dining-room that she saw herself. Dinner was at
half-past six; it shortly would be served; and the table set, her task
completed, Bab sat with her chin on her hands. Across on the hearthrug
stood Varick. He was in evening clothes, and Bab had just tied his tie.
"Tell me," she'd said, "if tonight things were changed, and I--I was
up there---- If you, you----" Ah, yes; if things were changed! If they
were changed, indeed, and she could be there, uptown, with him, would
he then not think her as pretty, as charming, as desirable as those
other girls he knew? That was the question, the one she'd half asked,
then had not dared to finish! A dance! A party with him there! At the
thought then how her heart had leaped! To be there with him! To have
him dance with her! She still could recall her first exhilaration. Yes,
but that had been weeks ago! There was a difference now; and Bab, a
queer look in her eyes, glanced swiftly, perhaps guiltily, at the man
who sat beside her. It was the first acknowledgment to herself, that
glance, of how far in the past had fallen that romance of hers at Mrs.
Tilney's. Far indeed!

Still sitting there, her face inexpressive, she had looked away, when
of a sudden she heard Beeston speak.

"Varick, eh?" he growled. "That fellow asked here!"

He stared about him, his dull eyes threatening, a deep color crowding
into his face.

"Well, why don't you answer?" he demanded. "Who asked that fellow? I've
told you, haven't I, I'll have no Varick in my house!"

It was David who replied.

"No one's asked him," he said quietly. "I've been trying to decide if I
should."

"You?"

It would be difficult to give his inflection. It expressed doubt,
incredulity, as if Beeston distrusted his own ears.

"You trying?"

"Why, yes," said David, his air puzzled; "why not? Varick's a friend of
mine, isn't he? I only wondered whether he'd care to come." Then with
an unexpectedness that made her gasp David added: "Besides, I thought
Bab might like to have him. They were friends at Mrs. Tilney's, you
know."

Friends? Bab with difficulty managed to hide the conflict of her
emotions. Again she glanced swiftly at David. She wondered, had he
known all, whether he would even consider asking Varick. But this was
the least of it. Did she herself want him? Was she ready to see him
again? It was queer that though she had resolved to evict him from her
mind the mere thought of him should so confuse her! Just then she was
aware that Beeston shot a glance at her. Afterward he gazed at David
briefly.

His air was absorbed. It was as if he debated something, as if some
disclosure hovered on his lips. And what the disclosure was Bab had
little doubt. She had not forgotten yet what had occurred the day she
had driven with him alone. Was that what he meant to divulge? What
indeed seemed curious was her hope that he would not blurt it out
before David. Why that hope? Why her dislike to have David hear? After
all he was only her cousin--nothing but a relative. Guardedly Bab
watched old Beeston.

"H'm!" he said presently. "Then you haven't asked him yet?"

David said no. He was waiting, he said, to decide, and again Beeston
grunted.

"Decide? Decide what?" he asked. "Whether you want him? That's it,
isn't it?" he mumbled.

David shook his head.

"No," he said, "it's whether Bab wants him."

She did not move, start; she merely raised her eyes. Bab could not have
told, had her life depended on it, how she managed to keep back the
color from her face. She decide? Deep down in his throat Beeston gave
vent to a sudden chuckle, sardonic, mocking, a laugh stifled as swiftly
as it was given. Then, his eye gleaming, he stared at her.

"Well, that seems to settle it! Do you want him asked, my girl?"

Bab smiled back at him quietly.

"Not if you don't," she replied.

There was a sudden movement. Beeston, again sitting back in his chair,
stared before him, a lurking gleam of triumph in his eyes.

"That's good!" he said. "If that fellow ever sets foot in my house now
I'll bundle him neck and crop out of doors!" Then he beckoned roughly
to Crabbe, the butler. "You hear me, Crabbe? Don't you ever let him
inside my door!"




XIII


"Pass the relish, please!"

It was Miss Hultz who spoke. Attired in a smart spring poplin,
indisputably _chic exquis_ as advertised, the lady from Bimberg's
flashed all her handsome front teeth in a smile directed across the
napery of Mrs. Tilney's dinner table. Varick, plunged in a reverie,
awoke abruptly.

"I beg pardon?" he inquired.

"The relish," repeated Miss Hultz.

Like others at the boarding house, the lady had of late begun to regard
Varick with a new interest, a feeling of sympathy tinged deeply with
regret. It was as if something in his aspect had aroused this, and that
her heartstrings, touched by it, twanged in a responsive chord:

  Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
    Prithee, why so pale?

Not that Varick was either wan or pale, or that fortune had failed
to smile on him. On the contrary, at the bank he recently had been
promoted, his pay doubled as well. But Miss Hultz had her suspicions of
what was in the air; and with her little finger elegantly extended, her
manner nice, she was pronging into the relish jar when again she spoke.
The pickles, it appeared, had been merely a pretext, a preface.

"Seen the piece in the paper, Mr. Varick?" Varick said no, he hadn't
read the evening paper; and hearing this Miss Hultz, her air now arch,
impaled a pearly onion on her fork. The piece, she said, was in the
society column; and she added: "It's all about a little friend of
yours, Mr. V."

In brief it was an account of Bab's dance that absorbed Miss Hultz.
Tonight was the night it was to be given.

"Indeed?" Varick remarked.

He sat listening idly, while with a great particularity of detail, as
if nothing were too trivial, nothing too insignificant, Miss Hultz
related all she had gleaned from the newspaper's account.

"It's to be a dinner dance!" she announced. "You get me, don't you!"
Then having let the table grapple with this compelling fact, Miss Hultz
leaped to the next illuminating detail. "Covers"--it was the reporter
she quoted--"covers will be laid for twenty couples!"

Nor was this all! As Varick sat there, his manner politely attentive
but his wits far afield, there sounded dully in his ears all that
plethora of sickly, silly inanities with which the society reporter
embellishes his spindling effort. "Exclusive! Select! Our Younger
Set! Gotham's Upper Tendom!" Bab, little Bab, was to have her dance;
and with a growing sorrow at what it signified and in the end must
inevitably involve, Varick listened, hardly hearing, while Miss Hultz
buoyantly prattled on.

Since the afternoon when she had brought David Lloyd to see Mr.
Mapleson, Varick had not heard from Bab, either through the little man
or otherwise. Nor had Mr. Mapleson heard either. A fortnight since then
had passed; but to the two, in their growing uneasiness, each hour of
that time had seemed an age. Nor had Varick's reflections during the
fortnight been exactly those of a lover. The condemned awaiting the
hour of execution could not have felt more depressed.

It was not only what Bab had said to him, her denunciation, that
had swept him off his feet, but it was Mr. Mapleson's revelation
about David Lloyd. David a suitor? He had been quick to see what
that involved; David, indeed, might be a cripple, but the appeal,
the attraction of David's character would go far to obscure the one
blemish, his infirmity. Varick knew that. He knew, too, the pity,
the compassion, that would warm Bab toward David Lloyd, she with her
warm-hearted, impulsive tenderness. He had but a single consolation.
That was the thought, the grim reflection, that were ever the fraud
found out David's family would at once effectually put an end to any
romance. David's father was a perpetual guarantee of that! He let his
son marry a nobody--an impostor into the bargain? And there was Beeston
too! When Varick thought of him again he smiled grimly, a vision before
him of what would happen once Beeston learned the imposture! Yes, but
what if Beeston never learned?

Varick was in the midst of this reflection, his brow moist with it,
when again Miss Hultz addressed him. About his _vis-à-vis_ there was
nothing mean, nothing malicious. Her curiosity for the moment had
merely got the better of her. However, that did not in the least alter
the awkwardness of the question that Miss Hultz now put to him.

"I say, Mr. Varick," she said. "You're going tonight, of course, ain't
you?"

Then, when Varick said no, that he was staying at home, Miss Hultz gave
an exclamation.

"Not going?" she ejaculated.

It was so. Bab had not asked him, and if she had he would not have
gone. However, Varick saw no reason why all this need be explained, and
he was searching in his mind for some evasive answer when of a sudden
there was an interruption. Jessup was its author.

"Varick!" said Jessup abruptly.

Having caught Varick's eye then, with a guarded glance he indicated the
head of the table where Mr. Mapleson sat. Throughout the colloquy with
Miss Hultz the little man had displayed every sign of distaste, not to
say disquiet. Now, however, shrugged down in his chair, his face blank,
he was staring at a scrap of pasteboard, a visiting card, that Lena,
the waitress, had just handed him. Varick, as he looked, felt his heart
knock fiercely.

Many seconds passed while Mr. Mapleson sat huddled in silence,
gazing at the card. Manifestly what it portended was momentous, for
presently he gave vent to a stifled breath, a wheeze. Then with the
same suddenness a change sped over him. It was as if some thought, some
swift, compelling resolution, had sprung into his mind to steel him
and, thrusting back his chair, he arose, his face molded into a look
of unflinching determination. Heroic--that was his air! Mr. Mapleson
for once looked noble. Walking to the dining-room door, he turned and
beckoned to Varick.

"Let me speak to you," said Mr. Mapleson, his voice strongly composed;
then passing out into the hall he stood waiting, his face still firm.
His eyes, too, were gleaming resolutely. Varick joined him hurriedly.
"Look!" said Mr. Mapleson.

His tone was dead, his air quite impassive, as he held out to Varick
the visiting card. Varick glanced at it swiftly. Then with Mr. Mapleson
at his heels he went up the stairs to see the man who waited in Mrs.
Tilney's parlor. It was Lloyd, Beeston's son-in-law.

He was in evening dress, but in his air was nothing that accorded with
that festive attire. Planted on the hearthrug, his hat in one hand,
his other tugging at his pale mustache, he gave Varick and Mr. Mapleson
as they entered a sudden, piercing look. In it was contempt, that and
animosity mixed with satisfaction. Lloyd, Senior, one saw, felt triumph.

"Good evening," said Varick quietly.

The gentleman did not even trouble himself to reply. Transferring his
glance to Mr. Mapleson, he looked him up and down.

"Are you John Mapleson?" he inquired.

Then when Mr. Mapleson, after moistening his lips, had said yes, Lloyd,
his manner brisk, wasted no time in coming to the point.

"I'll be brief with you, Mapleson!" he said brusquely, and as he spoke
he turned to Varick. "Varick, I'll be brief with you as well. Unless
tonight you two take that girl away from my father-in-law's house
uptown I'll see to it myself that she's turned out, bag and baggage!
What's more, tomorrow morning I'll turn you all over to the police!"

Then he strode toward the door.

"That's all!" said Mr. Lloyd.




XIV


The dinner was at eight. At half-past seven, long before the first
of the guests possibly could arrive, Bab, dressed and ready, came
pitapatting down the broad stairway in her high-heeled little gold
slippers. On each cheek a spot of color burned, and Bab's blue eyes,
too, gleamed brightly, dancing with suppressed excitement The house
during the day had been transformed.

A huge bank of palms behind which the orchestra was to play half filled
the hall, and everywhere there were flowers. Bab's breath came swiftly
as she saw them. She had not expected anything like this, and, her hand
on the stair rail, she halted, gazing about her, thrilled. Seeing her,
Crabbe, the white-haired butler, came hurrying from the pantry. Like
her, Crabbe, too, was filled with suppressed excitement.

"Mr. David's in the library, please," he announced; "he said I was to
let you know." Then his taciturnity for once forgotten, Crabbe smiled
broadly. "Wonderful, Miss Barbara, isn't it? The master's orders it
was!"

"My grandfather's!" Bab had cried out in astonishment.

All along, it had seemed to her, Beeston had regarded her first dance
only in gloomy tolerance, as if he wished the confusion and stir in his
household at an end. But apparently she had been mistaken. Of a sudden
that evening Beeston had appeared upon the scene, and after a look
about him had demanded where the florist was. Then when the man had
come running, Beeston, his brows twitching, more than ever grim, had
rumbled an order at him. After that for an hour confusion had piled on
itself in the household. Then as hurriedly it had passed, while out of
it the house had risen transformed, beautified into a bower.

Bab listened intently to what old Crabbe was telling her. In the
months she had lived there in that house she had grasped how
many-sided was Beeston's dark and formidable nature. And yet, grim as
it was and uncompromising, the man had about him, somewhere buried
in his half-starved soul, a streak of sentimentalism impulsive and
surprising. Of this his orders for the night's decoration seemed
an evidence, and Bab still was looking about her in wonder, her
appreciation growing, when at the door of the library Beeston himself
appeared. Crabbe, breaking off in the midst of a sentence, sought to
efface himself, but Beeston had seen him.

"Here, you, _Crabbe_!" he grunted.

Bearing on the arm of his young English valet, Cater, he came scuffling
along the hall, his stick thwacking loudly on the floor, his brow
darkened by an angry frown.

"Yes, sir," said Crabbe.

"My son-in-law, Mr. Lloyd--has he come in?" Beeston demanded abruptly.

Crabbe bent toward him deferentially.

"Mr. Lloyd was here, sir, and left. It was an hour ago."

Again a growl left Beeston.

"I know when he left! What I want to know is--has he come back?"

On being informed that Mr. Lloyd had not returned, Beeston struck the
floor a vicious blow with his stick.

"He'll be back and I want to see him! You hear? You let me know the
instant he comes in!"

"Very good, sir," Crabbe replied and, dismissed with a brusque wave of
the hand, withdrew to the pantry. Then, freeing his arm from Cater's,
Beeston gave him, too, a knockdown scowl.

"Get out!" he ordered. Cater, as ordered, got out.

Bab was still there on the stairs. That raw, ill-mannered roughness so
often Beeston's mood was too old a story now for her to give much heed
to it, and she was moving off indifferently when he put a hand swiftly
on her arm.

"Wait!" ordered Beeston. "You hear? Wait!" Bab gazed at him wide-eyed.
"I want to have a look at you," said Beeston.

His mouth set, his lips protruding on themselves, he stamped up the
hall a way, and, pushing a button set there in the wall, sent a flood
of light pouring down from the chandelier. Then he came pounding back.

"Now stand where you are!" directed Beeston.

Bab in wonder obeyed. To be inspected, to be looked over, appraised and
then admired may perhaps be the object all women have when they array
themselves in all the allurement of their dress. But what an inspection
this was! Not even in her last survey before the mirror had she given
herself a closer, a more critical scrutiny.

"Turn round!" directed Beeston.

Bab turned.

"Now turn the other way!"

Again she turned. Her head poised, wondering, she watched him over her
shoulder. Beeston had bent forward now, both his gnarled hands clasped
upon his stick, and under their heavy lids his somber eyes pored over
her. What his motive was in looking her over like that she had not the
faintest notion. Then of a sudden Beeston spoke.

"Huh!" he said, his tone a half-contemptuous growl. "Good-looking, you
are, aren't you! A handsome piece, and healthy and strong too! Yes,
that's what you are!" Then with a sudden movement, surprising in its
swiftness, he bent over and tapped her on the arm. "Lucky for you!"
he said. "Lucky for you!" The words still on his lips, he indicated
the library door. "Davy's in there. You go to him, you hear?" The next
instant he was gone, calling as he stamped along the hall: "Crabbe,
Crabbe, come give me an arm up the stairs!"

       *       *       *       *       *

David, too, had come down early. Since the beginning of the spring,
the time when the Lloyds had moved out to their place on Long Island,
he had had a room for himself at his grandfather's. Ordinarily the
country appealed far more to David than the town, but of late, for
various reasons, he seemed to have changed his preference. Bab found
him now in the library, his chin upon his hands, a book opened on his
knees. The scene with Beeston, an incident as astonishing as it was
inexplicable, had left her uncomfortable; but at the sight of David all
Bab's animation returned at a bound. Leaning over, she slipped the book
away from him.

"Silly!"

"Oh, hello!"

His air as he looked up was bewildered, and again she laughed.

"You weren't reading; your book was upside down! A fine time to be
dreaming!"

"Not dreaming; I was thinking," he answered, and though a smile went
with the words there was a note in his tone that instantly caught her
attention.

"Why, David!" she murmured.

She came round in front of him as she spoke, and again, a second time
that evening, her voice was slow with wonder.

"David, what's wrong?" asked Bab.

He shook his head.

"Nothing," he said. Then as he looked her over, from the crown of her
soft brown hair to her little golden slippers, David's lips parted.

"Bab, you're lovely tonight!" he murmured. "That gown makes you more
than ever lovely!"

Bab dropped him a curtsy.

"Recognize it? It's the same rose gown you liked the other night!"

His eyes leaped to hers, a sudden look. A swift speech hovered on his
lips, but before he could utter it Bab spoke again.

"Look, Davy, see this too!"

She had bent her head, her hands raised to play with something at her
throat--a slender platinum thread from which hung a single pearl,
pear-shaped and heavy. Intent on it she did not see the light that
leaped into his eyes.

"Wonderful, isn't it!" she murmured, and held it out for him to see.
Her face rapt, she looked down at the pearl again. In the hollow of her
small pink palm the pearl lay like a dewdrop in the petal of a rose.
Such a gem might well have graced a duchess.

"Grandfather gave it to me tonight," she said.

A little laugh, birdlike in its happiness, rippled from her. "What
dears you all are! You're all wonderful! All my relatives are!" Then,
hardly aware of what she did or what it would mean to him, this
new-found cousin, Bab bent above him and laid her hand upon his cheek.
The effect was instantaneous.

Poor Bab! In the time, now weeks gone by, when wounded and resentful
she had thrown herself in David's way, hoping David might help her to
forget, she had not even dreamed the effort ever would lead to this.
But it had! At her touch, the soft warmth of her fingers laid upon his
cheek, the long smoldering fire pent up in David's heart burst into
flame.

"Bab!" She felt him quiver beneath her touch. The next instant, with
both his hands he trapped hers in his, the man's strong, slenderly
shaped fingers twining themselves with hers. "Bab! Bab!" he whispered.
Then he looked up at her, and in David's face was something she had not
seen there before. His voice, when again he spoke, rang like a harp
string with emotion.

"Not just a cousin, Bab! Not that--can't you see!"

He made no effort, though he still held her hand, to draw her nearer to
him. The man's feeling indeed had rocked him to the core, but he was
fiercely striving to master it. He was trying to be gentle! He fought
himself that he might not frighten her!

"Bab, can't you see how I love you!" said David, his voice thick.
"Can't you?"

Bab slowly drew in her breath. Her lips parting, her breast heaving
with the tumult of emotion that the fire in his had roused, she gazed
down at him in troubled bewilderment. No need to tell her what she had
done. One look at him was enough.

"Oh, Davy, Davy!" she murmured. "I didn't know! I didn't know!"

The cry came from her eloquent of the distress, the doubt that filled
her mind with its conflict. There were indeed many things Bab didn't
know! David as a cousin she might love, but did she love him otherwise?
Cousin or lover, which was it to be? The weeks, the months he had been
with her had shown how perfectly he in his gentleness could be the one;
could he now be the other, too? Her eyes grew more troubled!

"I didn't know," said Bab again, murmuring as if to herself. "I didn't
think that cousins loved like that!"

She saw him stir, moving uncomfortably.

"Cousins?" he echoed.

"Yes," whispered Bab; "I didn't think----"

A strange look came into his eyes.

"Look at me, Bab," he ordered; and as ordered Bab looked at him. "Now
tell me," said David; "tell me the truth! If I--if I were not your
cousin, then--then----"

He abruptly broke off. In his tone, too, was now something that filled
her with disquiet.

"Then what?" she asked, her brow clouding.

David for a moment did not reply. It was as if he pondered something,
as if he debated telling her what hovered on his lips. His dark eyes,
turbulent with the feeling that still raised its storm within him,
clung to hers as if to search out from her inner consciousness the real
truth of what she felt for him.

"You love me, don't you?" he asked suddenly.

She did not answer.

"Bab, tell me you do," he pleaded.

Still she didn't answer.

"Won't you?" he asked.

It was not until he'd asked a third time that she replied.

"I don't know," she faltered then. "I care for you, David, but how I
care I can't tell. Don't ask me now. Give me a little time."

His hand she felt suddenly tighten. Outside the doorbell had just rung;
then the footsteps of Hibberd, the second man, could be heard squeaking
discreetly along the hall.

"Will you tell me tonight?" demanded David.

"I don't know; I'll think," answered Bab.

David slowly drew in his breath.

"Promise me this then," he said laboriously. "Whether it's yes or no,
if tonight my father tries to say anything to you promise me you'll
not listen to him till you've sent for me! Will you promise?"

"Why, David!" Bab murmured, astonished.

"Have I your promise?"

"Why, yes, but----"

She broke off abruptly. The library door was opening and now Hibberd
entered.

"Beg pardon, Miss Barbara, the guests will be arriving."




XV


And so it stood. Her answer she was to let David have that night. She
had promised it. As Bab, the promise given, slipped from the library
and made her way swiftly toward the drawing-room at the front, one
needed only a glance to guess the ferment already working in her mind.
Her eyes glowed. On each cheek again the color burned, now with a
newer, more feverish brightness. Marry him? Her breath, at the thought,
came fast!

The drawing-room, by the time she got there, was filling rapidly, and
instilled with an animation that momentarily increased, she gayly
greeted these arrivals, the first of the evening's guests. Her heart
she could feel throb. A sense of exhilaration roused her. It was as if
wine ran coursing through her veins; and her eyes dancing, her little
head cocked sidewise like a bird's, she laughed and chatted, filled
with a quick coquetry as new to her as it was charming. Bab never had
looked more alluring.

She was in the midst of this, her face radiant, when she felt a hand
touch her suddenly on the arm. The hand was Miss Elvira's; and as Bab
looked up she found Miss Elvira gazing at her with an eye as dull and
accusing as a haddock's. Her voice, when she spoke, was correspondingly
morose.

"What's happened?" asked Miss Elvira guardedly in an aside.

Bab stared.

"Happened?" she echoed.

"Look at David!" rejoined Miss Elvira significantly.

Bab looked. In a corner across the drawing-room he sat, a figure of
silence, nibbling his finger tips. A frown ruffled his brow; and though
he was surrounded by half a dozen of the guests, young men and young
women together, it was manifest that he was deaf to their laughter and
talk. Miss Elvira gave Bab a swift, searching look.

"Have you two been up to anything?"

"I? David?"

"You two haven't had a tiff, have you?"

A tiff! Of course not! But Bab needed no second look at him to
guess the cause of David's disquiet. She, too, felt that selfsame
disturbance, that same tumult of the mind; but she, with a woman's art
to aid her, had managed better to hide it. But now as Miss Elvira's
eye, fishlike in its gloom, probed hers, Bab felt the color pour
suddenly over her face and neck. A half-stifled "Humph!" escaped Miss
Elvira, a mumble the significance of which was evident. Then, turning
about abruptly, Miss Elvira resumed the task of greeting the last of
the arrivals. That David should thus disclose his feelings, Bab saw,
would never do. At the first opportunity, therefore, she hurried across
the room. Bending swiftly over him, she touched him lightly on the
shoulder.

"Spunk up!" whispered Bab. A flashing smile went with the words.

David, as it was evident, spunked up instantly. Bab returned to the
other guests she had left. When again she looked across the room at
him, he, too, was laughing and chatting, his mood now as exhilarant as
hers. As her glance wandered away from him a pair of eyes encountered
hers. Mrs. Lloyd stood gazing at her intently. Bab in spite of herself
colored faintly.

Early that afternoon, long indeed before they'd been expected, the
two Lloyds had motored in from their country place on Long Island.
Evidently they had come in no little haste; and Lloyd, after a brief
interview with David, had as hastily dashed off in the motor again.
As for Mrs. Lloyd, almost at once she had retreated to her room,
vouchsafing to Bab only a brief, not too exuberant greeting, a word
or so purred indolently, as if with great effort. Bab by now owned to
herself that she did not like the Lloyds. True, for David's sake she
had tried to, but not even this had availed. Against the stone wall of
their indifference she had only bruised herself.

The look that she had just surprised in her aunt's eyes, however, was
not just indifferent. Mrs. Lloyd, after a quick stare at her son, had
shot an equally swift glance at Bab, and there was in it something so
searching that Bab felt herself start. Why should she be looked at like
that? It was as if Mrs. Lloyd knew something. It was as if in that look
she revealed the disdain that this knowledge gave her. What was it she
knew? Had David told? At the thought a little chill touched her. If she
should say yes to David, what then? What of their antagonism? But Bab,
the thought once digested, at once rid herself of it. The Lloyds, to be
sure, were David's parents, but why need she feel fear of them? Even if
they were opposed to her, David wasn't! And that he wasn't was after
all the main thing. Buoyant again, her animation reviving swiftly, Bab
freed her mind of that passing shadow. A moment later Crabbe appeared
at the drawing-room door and bent deferentially toward Miss Elvira.

"Madam is served!" announced Crabbe.

Her face aglow, Bab shot a glance at David. How splendid it all was!
From then on it seemed to Bab that the events of that evening arranged
and rearranged themselves with kaleidoscopic swiftness and confusion.
The dinner slipped by as if hurried feverishly. Too much was happening,
she felt. It seemed as though her mind could not encompass it all. Her
glance, roving about the huge, dark dining-room, now transformed, dwelt
on the flowers, the gleaming silver, the cut glass and snowy linen. All
this for her! Already she had been asked for a dozen dances! Already,
in evidence of what yet was to come, the music hidden behind the palms
struck into a swaying, seductive measure. Her dance indeed! And then of
a sudden came remembrance.

The huge room, splendid with its profusion of costly flowers,
glittering and brilliant with all its appurtenances of silver, glass
and linen--all this with its lights, with the gay luster and coloring
of the gowns, for an instant faded dimly. On an afternoon, a day now
long past and almost forgotten, she saw herself in Mrs. Tilney's
kitchen; and all by herself, and in pigtails and pinafore, she danced,
pirouetting to the music of an unseen, far-off orchestra heard only in
her fancy. With what stateliness she had trod that measure! With what
delicious solemnity she had bowed and balanced to and fro! And now to
think, here was the reality!

The thought was followed swiftly by another. Would David, had he seen
her then, have been allured? Probably not! Stilty, scrubby little girls
with spindling legs were scarcely what anyone would find alluring. Her
thought went further. At any stage of her life at Mrs. Tilney's would
David have been allured? She wondered indeed! Would he? Would his
family have let him be? At the thought a queer smile dawned in Bab's
blue eyes. It was not the Lloyds she thought about; it was the rest of
David's family too. What, marry a boarding-house waif? Peter Beeston's
grandson marry anyone like that! The idea! A nameless nobody?

But why think now of such things? Why let any cloud obscure her
happiness? Her face once more radiant, she was glancing about her, her
eyes dancing like elfin fires, when at the table adjoining a ripple of
laughter arose. David sat there. Her lips parted as she looked at him.

Tonight the big table that usually filled the room had been carried
out and its place filled with smaller tables. There were ten of these,
six of the guests seated at each, but at none of the ten had the
merriment been more evident, more spontaneous, than at David's. He
had bent forward, his face alight with its animation; and the others,
their eyes dancing, their lips parted as they listened, hung intently
on what he was saying. Bab swiftly took in the scene. Opposite David
sat Linda Blair, that bronze-haired, bizarre, attractive creature,
among the first David had introduced to Bab. Her chin on her hands
now, and her eyes veiled behind their long lashes, she was gazing,
as if idly, at David. Behind that idleness, though, Bab at the first
glance had seen something else. Linda Blair was a perfect example of
the highly cultivated New York type. The life, the game that surrounded
her she had been taught to play from the cradle up. From the days of
bib and tucker to the time of her coming out she had been trained
with a Spartan rigor to throttle every impulse. Her feelings she must
hide. She must at no moment disclose herself. Bab, though she liked
Linda Blair, often had thought her too impenetrable, too cold and
self-contained.

But not so now! Her frail, high-bred features had for a moment fallen
into repose; and off her guard now, the world might have read in
Linda's face exactly what she felt. Her eyes alone were eloquent.
They hung upon David, inexpressibly friendly and admiring; they were,
indeed, even kindlier than that.

Bab looked at her in misty wonder. She had heard much about Linda
Blair. David and she since childhood had been playmates--intimates, in
fact. However, that either had felt for the other anything deeper than
friendliness Bab had not even dreamed. She wondered now that David
never had responded, for Linda was beautiful! More than that, Linda had
all that birth and cultivation can give. The fact that David should
seem to Linda desirable made him all the more so in Bab's eyes. And
he had asked Bab to marry him! Would she? Indeed, why should she not?
Cousins before this had married.

She was still looking on, still gazing with a discreet but rising
interest at what unwittingly she had seen, when across the dining-room,
framed in the background of the doorway, Bab beheld a figure, now well
known to her, emerge abruptly into view. David's father had returned.

The dinner, after all but a preliminary to the night's real
entertainment, was nearly over. Already, with the informality of such
affairs, many of the guests had risen and were drifting about, visiting
from table to table; and Lloyd, after a swift glance at Bab, then at
his son, beckoned to Mrs. Lloyd. Evidently the signal was expected.
She arose instantly, and disregarding a look of inquiry Miss Elvira
gave her, made her way toward the hall. A moment later, conversing
hurriedly, the two Lloyds disappeared. But Bab, though she saw them
go, felt small concern.

Outside the orchestra again had struck up, and this time the music
instantly had effect. It was a dance that was being played, a lively
measure, and round the room heads began to nod, feet to tap, beating
time to it. Bab no longer could wait.

"Come along, everyone," she cried, and pushing back her chair she arose.

David, too, had risen. After teetering uncertainly for an instant,
he got his crutches tucked beneath his arms and started slowly
toward the hall. Linda Blair was beside him. Her pace matched to
his slow progress, she sauntered through the doorway and toward the
drawing-room, her lithe, long-limbed grace queerly contrasted by his
slow, cumbrous effort. Indeed she herself must have been conscious of
it--she could not have helped being so; but if she was her look gave
no hint of it. Her attitude toward him and his crutches was as if the
crutches did not exist. Bab's eyes grew misty. Filled with pity, she
was still gazing at him when her escort, the young man who had taken
her in to dinner, faced her smilingly.

"Shall we try this?" he asked.

A nod was her answer. She dared not trust herself to speak. Then
a moment later she found herself carried away on the orchestra's
enlivening strains. By now nearly all in the room were dancing.
Already, too, the guests asked in for the dance were beginning to
arrive in little parties. Bab's dinner was not the only festivity that
had preceded the dance; and as the newcomers, all in high spirits,
rolled up to the door in their motors, the once grim, dark Beeston
house awoke anew. Bab had circled the drawing-room not more than once
when she was obliged to pause to greet the new arrivals. Then when
they, partner and partner, had whirled off to the music, there were
still others who must be greeted. But the time came when at last she
was free; and the music again thrumming in her ears, she had turned
to smile up at her escort, that patient, smiling young man, when she
saw across the room, sitting alone and, as she thought, forgotten, her
cousin, David.

Miss Elvira for the moment had withdrawn. The Lloyds, too, since the
dinner had not reappeared. Nor was Linda Blair to be seen. David indeed
had been deserted; and escaping from her partner with a brief apology,
Bab sped across the drawing-room.

"Why, David," she murmured; "they've all left you! I didn't know!"

He looked up, smiling quietly.

"Why, I'm all right," he returned. "Linda's been with me, but just now
I made her go dance. You go, too, won't you?"

But Bab said no; she meant to sit with him a while, and in spite of
his protests she drew up a chair to the corner where he sat. It would
be like David, she knew, to see that all the others enjoyed themselves
while he was left to look on. Presently when he began to protest, "But
this is your dance, dear, yours!" Bab gently laid a hand on his.

"Yes, but I wish to be with you, don't you see?"

She heard him catch softly at his breath.

"With me?"

His fingers closed on the hand that still touched his, but Bab made no
effort to withdraw it.

"Babs," he said, and again, as if he feared to frighten her, his voice
grew gentle--"Babs, I can make you happy; I can do everything in the
world for you. Give me your answer now, won't you? You've got to give
it tonight, you know, so why wait? The sooner the better, Babs."

She did not answer. Beneath the filmy chiffon of her dress she could
feel her heart flutter like the wings of a captive moth. She dared
not look at him. She knew that if she did she would betray herself to
that throng of gay, careless dancers, these guests of hers, intent
though they were on their gayety. But troubled, agitated at what he
asked, she could not but wonder at his insistence on haste. Why was it
so imperative that she should answer now? It all seemed so swift, so
breathlessly unexpected too. His hands tightened on hers.

"Babs."

She still did not answer.

"Babs, dearest," he whispered.

Though his voice broke, deep with its entreaty, she still steeled
herself. Then his fingers released hers slowly and he drew in a breath,
a sigh.

"Well, if you won't even look at me," he said, and at that the walls of
the city gave.

"Oh, David, David!" and she looked at him, her eyes suffused. "If only
I can make you happy!"

"Happy?" he echoed hoarsely. His face was transfigured.

"Yes, if only I can," she said.

The music went on. Alone then, forgotten as it seemed in the midst
of that rising gayety, the man and the girl sat silent, their faces
tortured into an air of bland, conventional impassivity. Of the storm
that racked them inwardly who saw or who in that room could have known?
It was for them, for one of them at least, the greatest, the most
potential moment that life can bring; but life--the life they led, that
is--ordered that they must hide every hint of their emotion. Finally
David, summoning his courage, looked at her. His voice when he spoke
broke again. His face, too, in that moment had grown heavy and lined
with care.

"You must go dance now, Babs," he said fixedly. "This mustn't spoil
your party. Come!"

She tried weakly to protest.

"I'd rather not, David."

But David shook his head determinedly.

"Tonight's your night," he said; and giving in she arose.

"Very well, Davy," she was saying when, her eyes widening and her lips
parting in slow wonder, she paused. Then the color crept slowly up into
Bab's face, a suffusing crimson tide, and, her breath held, she stood
like one in a trance. Across the room was Varick. And as he saw Bab he
turned and came swiftly toward her.




XVI


As in a dream, the tides of confusion coming and going in her face,
Bab watched him as he crossed the room, threading his way among the
dancers. Varick, she saw, had many friends in that throng. On every
side the men called him a greeting as he passed; the girls, their
partners, waving him a gay, friendly welcome. In spite of this,
however, Varick's air was hardly what one would call festive.

A smile, half grim, half disdainful, lurked in his eyes. It was as if
his presence there somehow grotesquely seemed amusing, and about him,
too, was a look of stubborn purpose she had never seen before. If Bab,
after their last encounter, had thought to find him ill at ease she
was doomed to disappointment. However, the thoughts in her mind were
of quite a different nature. What was he doing there, she was asking
herself. How came he to be in that house? Her mind working swiftly
even in its bewilderment, she recalled that moment, only a few days
past, when she herself had heard Beeston say Varick should not set foot
inside his door. And yet here he was! That David had not asked him was
evident. She was standing there, her mind still a maze, when she heard
David speak. Obviously his astonishment was as great as hers.

"Varick!" he exclaimed.

Varick's air had not altered. But for all its grimness he returned the
greeting cheerfully.

"Hello, Davy!"

Then he turned to Bab. As Bab looked at him she saw the hardness fade
from his face. A look of sadness, of regret took its place, as if in
that glimpse of her, his first for days, his resolution, whatever it
may have been, had died.

"Why, Bab," he said, his eyes eloquent now; "you are lovely!"

Bab offered a limp hand to him.

"How do you do, Mr. Varick?" she returned.

A hobbledehoy could not have done worse. Self-conscious, nettled that
she had been so awkward, she snatched away her hand. Varick, however,
seemed too absorbed to notice. Then to her relief she again heard David
speak. "It's good of you to have come, Bayard," he said hesitatingly.
"I didn't know you would."

Varick looked at him queerly.

"I suppose you know I wasn't asked," he returned slowly, his tone
deliberate.

"Not asked?"

A low murmur of embarrassment escaped David, and Bab, watching, saw his
eyes flutter uncomfortably.

"Then my aunt didn't send you a card?"

Varick shook his head.

"No, Davy; it's as I say, I just came."

She looked on in wonder. So he had come uninvited then. After that she
saw Varick and David exchange a long, steady look. In it comprehension
seemed to pass from one to the other, for, his eyes uneasy, his brow
clouded with its growing shadow of disquiet, David slowly nodded.

"I understand," he said. "You've seen my father then?"

"Yes, I've seen him," assented Varick; and Bab moved restlessly, her
lips parting in dull wonder.

However, if the riddle, the mystery, were still a mystery to her,
it was all clear now to Varick. Downtown that night, there in Mrs.
Tilney's parlor, Lloyd's visit had in a flash laid it all bare to him.
It was, of course, Lloyd who first had suspected the fraud. It was
Lloyd, too, of course, who had set those detectives on the trail. In
his gnawing self-interest, incensed that another now would share in the
Beeston money, he had been quick to seize on, to nourish the smallest
seed of suspicion. The lawyers Mr. Mapleson might delude; Mr. Mapleson
might even cozen Mrs. Tilney. Envy and greed, though, boast a sharper
eye than goodwill. In not more than a few days after Lloyd had set
out sniffing suspiciously along the trail he struck the scent of Mr.
Mapleson's early downfall, that first forgery that had sent him off to
jail. After that the rest was simple.

Lloyd's presence at Mrs. Tilney's was easily explained. For one thing,
he wished no scandal; he sought merely to rid himself of Bab. The
reason, however,

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