"Yes, Bayard. You don't know how kind and dear he's been. Then, too, you didn't come. So I said yes."
Again Varick had tried to save her, and again he had failed. Then, as he glanced toward the ballroom door, his face a study of bewilderment, he saw there what he had been expecting. Beeston had just entered and he had seen Varick and Bab.
XVII
The music had ended. In the stir that followed, the momentary confusion as the dancers, separating, strayed toward their seats, Varick glanced irresolutely about him. If he were to do anything he must do it quickly, he saw.
Beeston, his face menacing, was already halfway across the ballroom floor. The jig was up—that was evident. One needed but a look to see this, and Varick, as he caught the look on Beeston's face, felt his heart sink. It was not of himself, though, that Varick thought.
Bab stood there, gay in her borrowed plumes, the pearl, the great gem Beeston had given her, nestling on the snowy whiteness of her breast; and in spite of the cloud, the troubled bewilderment that still clung darkly to her eyes, Varick thought he had never seen her more brilliant, more bewitching. But now, it happened, not even her charm, her witchery, were to avail her.
Varick pondered swiftly. Should he tell her? It would be a mercy, he felt, however he told it, to forestall the brutal way he was sure Beeston would blurt it out. And that, too, was why he had come there, an unbidden guest, forcing his way into the house. It was to save Bab, it was to rescue her from just some such scene as this. But the instant Varick looked at her the words flocking to his lips died there. His heart failed him. He hadn't the courage to do it.
Tell her she was a fraud! Tell her she was a cheat, an impostor! He groaned to himself at the thought. Still irresolute, he had turned to glance apprehensively across the ballroom, when he felt a hand touch him quietly on the arm. David stood beside him.