His face gleaming, again he threw out both his hands.
"Oh!" he cried, "then if she were rich, if you knew her to be well-born, too, why—why——" Here Mr. Mapleson began awkwardly to falter—"Why, then you would—would——" There he paused. Moistening his lips, the little man quivered suddenly: "She could marry—marry anyone, don't you think?" he shrilled. "She could marry whom she chose; you think so, don't you?"
But if he did, Varick did not say so. A moment passed, and then, as it had been with Bab, a tide of color swept up into his face, mantling it to the brows. In other words he had seen at last exactly what Mr. Mapleson meant by his vague, faltering phrases. If Bab were rich, if Bab were well-born, then would Varick marry her? The question was never answered. Just then at Varick's back Mrs. Tilney's doorbell rang suddenly.
V
Would he marry Barbara Wynne? That night with its train of abrupt, confusing happenings, all following swiftly, one hard on the heels of another, Varick ever afterward could remember only as the mind recalls the vague, inconstant images of a dream. The least of it all, though, was that veiled query put to him by Mr. Mapleson. However, he had still to answer it, even to himself, when the clang of the doorbell interrupted.
Outside in the vestibule stood two persons—a woman and a man. Their voices, as they waited, were audible through the glass; and Varick, once he heard them, listened curiously. Something in their tone was familiar, especially in the woman's tone; and though the footfalls of Lena, the waitress, already could be heard slipslopping on the stair, he did not wait. Instinctively he threw open the door.
It was as he'd surmised. The two outside were known to him, and for a moment he gazed, astonished. The lady—for manifestly in spite of her curious appearance she was that—was the first to break the silence.
"Bless me!" she said in a voice that boomed like a grenadier's. "If it isn't Bayard Varick!"