Suddenly irritation swept over her. They were treating her like a child. A child—yes, that was it! They were all of them trying to hoodwink, to cozen her. Why?
Again and again, as Bab knelt there, her thoughts returned to the queer, distracting events that had marked her presence in that house. And still the truth evaded her. She arose presently and, going to the glass, unwound the coils of brown, wavy hair piled on her slender head, which by this time had begun to throb painfully. In all the dreary confusion in her mind one thought stood out above the others—she had lost Varick!
"One thought stood out ... she had lost Varick."
A half-hour passed, and she was again in her place before the dying coals. She could not sleep. Late as it was she felt she would rather sit with the fire for company than lie wide-eyed in bed, staring sleeplessly at the walls. More memories swam before her now. This time they were of that evening, the Christmas Eve, now months gone by, when in Mrs. Tilney's dowdy dining-room she had dreamed of herself as an heiress sought after and fortunate. The dream, still vivid, rose mockingly before her.
She would have a party, a dance. She would have music, flowers, lights. A gay figure, she would dance, her happiness complete. But little had she dreamed then, there at Mrs. Tilney's, that not one lover but two, the old love and the new, would be present, striving together to win her. And least of all had she dreamed it would be the old love that lost, the new love that won. But so it had been. Drearily staring into the grate, she was thinking how different the reality had been from her dream when, on the stairs outside, she again heard the muffled sound. This time, however, she did not mistake it.
Her heart thumping a swift tattoo of alarm, Bab struggled to her feet. Down the stairs, along the hall now and straight toward her door came the slow, painful footfalls. Then, after a pause—a vital moment in which the blood poured tumultuously into her face, her bare neck and shoulders—a hand tapped on her door, a guarded, secret signal. When she opened the door David stood before her, and at her look of inquiry he signaled her with a finger on his lips.