The roadster, a powerful machine, glittered with varnish and brightly polished metal. David never looked better than when he was seated at its wheel. As Bab came down the steps, smart in her furs and her fetching little toque and fashionably cut tweeds, a quick smile lighted his face. Certainly his features were attractive. Though he was not handsome, there was about him a look of high-bred, clean-cut manliness—an expression thoroughly appealing to women. As the chauffeur, having tucked a rug about Bab, climbed to his seat in the rumble, David bent swiftly toward her.
"Bab, you're beautiful!" he whispered.
The arm pressed against hers she could feel tremble with his feeling. Then, its engine purring softly, the car shot forward. Their way lay eastward. Taking to a cross-town bystreet, they were soon at the bridge, the broad reach of river below leaping in the crisp sunlight like silver. In the distance far below a long, narrow power yacht slipped past like a missile. "Look!" cried Bab. Her animation grew bubbling. Bending forward, her muff tucked beneath her chin, she looked about her with eyes glowing. Everything interested her. After the yacht it was a tug shrouded in steam and buffeting its way along that caught her exuberant notice. How delightful was the morning air! How the sunlight got into one's spirits! Bab laughed and chattered exhilarantly. David, too, laughed and chatted with her.
Before long they left the river behind them; and rolling out of the last dingy street that lay upon the way, they came presently to the country. In the lush, fresh coloring of its fields and of the low hills that lay hazy in the distance they found a new exhilaration. Time sped forgotten. Engrossed in one another, they considered little else.
The morning by now was well advanced, and as they forged along the broad, level highroad they began to meet the stream of motors that every day heads cityward from the big Long Island country places. David, as the roadster neared Eastbourne, began nodding to the occupants of the big limousines, the big touring cars and the smart, powerful motors like theirs that passed them. Each time he did so he was at pains to mention their names to Bab. And they were names, too, that would have thrilled the ordinary mortal, the man in the street. Bab herself was thrilled that David knew many of them. It pleased her that some of them, a few, she knew too. Most gratifying of all, though, was the interest with which David's acquaintances gazed at her. She wondered that often these looks were pointed. Was it because she was the Beeston heiress? Was it that alone, or had they guessed the truth about her and David? Plunged in this reverie, delightful to her with all the fancies it evoked, its dreams of place and power, she did not notice that as her chatter had subsided David's animation had risen correspondingly. All his life Long Island had been his playground, and hereabout there was hardly a stone, a tree, a hedge that was not familiar to him, filled with reminiscence. Then all at once his animation waned. As they topped the rise that led down to the Eastbourne plains he brought the car to a standstill.
"Look!" he said.
Bab had never seen Byewolde, the Beeston summer place. In the rush of life during the few months she had been a member of the household there had been no opportunity. Now, however, as she looked across the open lowland to the wooded slope it crowned, she knew the house instantly.
Ten minutes later the roadster, after a burst of speed that gave Bab the impression that she was being borne through the air on rushing wings, came to a halt under Byewolde's high Doris porch.