"Sit still, Bab," said David; then he turned to the chauffeur. "That's all, Gaffney," he directed; "I won't need you now." To Crabbe who, deferent, all eagerness, had come hurrying to the door, David bade a pleasant good morning. "Luncheon at one, Crabbe—just for us two, you understand. We'll be back."
Then he threw in the clutch, and the car shot out again from under the tall white porch. Bab said nothing. Awakened abruptly from the pensive reverie in which she had been plunged, she had seen instantly that there was some purpose behind David's quick, energetic manner. What the purpose was, though, she did not know or particularly care. His plans might be anything, she would be lazily in accord with them. The day, the leaping sunshine, the swift exhilaration of the ride and David's deferent, tender attention—all had been to her a subtle balm. She sat back in her cushioned seat, her chin tucked luxuriously in the soft deep pelage of her muff, indolent mentally and physically, her eyes lazily wandering over the view. It was the first time in days she had felt at peace with herself and her surroundings. It mattered little to her that inertness really was the reason for that peace. She was content not to think.
Byewolde, as such places go, was not vast perhaps. Its charm, instead, lay in its well-planned variety. The house, Colonial in type, stood facing a wide sweep of lawn, a stretch of rolling turf as soft and closely cropped as velvet. At one side of the house was a terrace hedged with box and evergreen; beyond that a sunken garden. A deep, dimpling pool lay at the garden's end, the depth sapphire with the reflection of the skies; and before it was a Roman marble garden seat, its snowy whiteness standing out against the carpet of turf, the bronze green background of the hedges. Bab's eyes lighted as the motor, turning out of the drive, headed down a byroad that led along the garden's side. Over the hedge she got a swift glimpse of its quiet, secluded charm. Then the road plunged of a sudden into a wood. Oaks, maples, elms, some of them huge, wove the lacelike tracery of their leaves and branches in a close network overhead, so that for a space the motor rolled onward through a tunnel of greenery. In its close, cloistered quiet one might have been miles from any habitation. The sunlight trickling through the latticed foliage overhead lit the wood's dim vistas with a mellow gleam, like light from a cathedral glass; and a hush fell upon Bab and David.
The motor, slowing down, purred softly, like some huge insect—a denizen of the wood. David touched Bab upon the arm. Along a sunlit opening a herd of deer slipped silently into view. Almost instantly they were gone, like wraiths dissolving into the wall of the foliage that enframed them. A thrush, somewhere hidden in that dim, bosky depth, of a sudden burst into a throb of song.
"Like it?" asked David, and Bab drew in her breath.
"It's wonderful!" she exclaimed.
He was silent for a moment, looking about him. Then, his tone deliberate, he said to her: "Grandfather's given me this. Before we owned it I used to come here. Then one day he bought it and gave me the deed. It was a birthday present."
Bab looked about her again. All this a birthday present! She would perhaps have been even more impressed had she known something of Long Island values. There were a thousand acres in that wood.
Of the Byewolde estate, however, the wood was but a minor part. The Beeston town house gave to the uninitiated no indication of the wealth of the owner, for it differed little from a hundred others in the neighborhood. Here, however, not even the most ignorant could err as to the money required to maintain such an establishment. As the motor, rolling on, threaded the roads that led from one quarter of Byewolde to the other, Bab herself grew impressed with it.