"You mean that you won't?"
"I'm afraid so," he responded gently.
"You won't help me at all?"
"Not that way, Bab. It's a question I wouldn't help any woman decide. What's more, I'd not marry a woman who wouldn't or who couldn't decide it for herself. If you love David Lloyd, your course lies open. If you don't love him, it lies equally open. You'll have to do the choosing."
He released the hand he held in his and began fumbling with the reins looped across his arm. The thoroughbred, busily cropping the roadside grass, lifted its shapely head, its muzzle nuzzling Varick's shoulder. Varick's lips were firmly pressed together. He did not look at Bab. "I must be going; we can't stay on here," he murmured. "Shall I see you again?"
With what composure she could command she turned toward him. Inwardly now the turmoil of her emotions rose to concert pitch. Of its fierceness, however, evidently he saw nothing. Bab's eyes again had in them that look of hardness that had been there at first. "Good-by," she said methodically. She did not bother to say whether they should meet or not. She felt within her shame a fierce self-condemnation. The fact she did not blink—she had flung herself at Varick's head, and Varick virtually had refused her! She had cheapened herself! With a fierce struggle to hold back the flood of tears, the hurt that flung its signals in her eyes, she gathered up the reins, then spoke to the waiting cob. The cart rolled swiftly up the road. Speeding along, it turned a bend in the wood's tunneled greenery. Behind it in the road the thoroughbred and its rider were left standing.
But had Bab looked back before it was too late she would have seen something that perhaps would have stilled the tempest of resentment, of bitter hurt, that raged within her. Varick still stood there in the road, the reins dangling from his hand, looking after her. Then, when he could no longer see the slim figure perched swaying in the high cart, his eyes dropped, and he stood on, his shoulders drooping, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. Forgotten, the thoroughbred once more fell to cropping the grass.
"Poor little girl!" whispered Varick. "My poor, poor little Bab!"
It was long after six when the cob, its flanks white with lather, came stepping swiftly up the drive to the portico at Byewolde. A groom from the stable was waiting. He gave one look at the horse, then glanced sideways at his mistress. Ordinarily she was not one to push an animal to its limit. But Bab gave no heed. Her bedroom was where she longed to be. Above all she wished to get there before any of the household should see her. The fates willed otherwise, it seemed.
"Begging pardon, please," said Crabbe as he opened the door for her; "Mrs. Lloyd will be in your sitting-room. She'll wish to see you."