"Not tonight," Bab answered. There was a moment's silence, then she heard David heavily and painfully plod his way along the hall, and the thump! thump! of his crutches finally died away. When she turned from the door Bab's eyes were filled with tears. Even David had left her now.
Five minutes more! At half-past eight, only a short half-hour now, the train for the city would leave Eastbourne, and after that there would be no train until well along toward midnight. The station was a mile away. She remembered, too, she would have her bag to carry. She must hurry.
She had no plans further than that she would go to New York. Mrs. Tilney's, however, was not her destination. She could never return to the boarding house so long as Varick was there.
To him she had so far hardly given a thought, but now she wondered vaguely whether he had known of the fraud all along. Probably he had. The significance of this, however, she did not debate. To her dazed mind it seemed long ages since she had met him in the wood, and she herself must have grown years older and wiser since then. All at once she was overwhelmed by a terrible loneliness. If she only had someone to whom she could appeal! If even Mr. Mapy were only with her!
At first Bab had thought that she never again would care to see the little man, that the bitter memory of what his act had cost her would remain between them always. Now she no longer felt that way. Her mind in its loneliness dwelt on the fact of how Mr. Mapy had loved her. It was this love after all that had led him to attempt that ridiculous fraud. And at the thought of the sorrowful, solitary little man, a sudden longing filled her to see him again. She would go to him, and perhaps in some new place they might begin life over again happily.
A startled exclamation here escaped Bab. A glance at the clock had shown her it wanted only a minute or two of eight. Spurred now to a new activity, she began tumbling into the bag the last of the things she had laid out on the bed. She could take little with her, of course; she saw that. The door of the closet near-by stood open and showed long rows of dresses—all the daintiest, the most costly. There were on the floor of the closet, too, double rows of little boots and shoes, and in the highboy against the wall were gloves, silk stockings, ribbons, scarfs. She must leave all these behind her. Only the smallest, the most personal, of belongings she was taking along. She did not own the others. They had been given to Barbara Beeston, the heiress—not to Bab, the boarding-house waif. With a wistful, brave little smile she was bending over to sort out a few handkerchiefs to take with her when out from among them fell a small morocco case. It was Beeston's pearl! The gem lay in its velvet bed gleaming up at her like a conjuring eye. In its exquisite beauty it seemed to symbolize all the refinement of that life of wealth and splendor she was now renouncing. For the first time she really grasped what she was giving up.
Just then the mantle clock struck eight. As the chime's silvery notes cried the hour a step on the stair again startled Bab. She paused, once more breathless. It was only Hibberd, however.
"Dinner is served, please. Thank you," said the servant.
Bab did not answer. Presently, the man's footfalls having died away, she turned back again to her packing. Nothing of all these things round her was hers. She could not lay claim even to the clothes she stood in. What she took, therefore, must be such things as afterward she would be able to replace. She had a grim satisfaction in this. A minute or so later Bab stealthily unlocked the bedroom door and stepped out into the hall.