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.