Her first duty, as she hurried down the stairs, was to tap at her grandfather's door. The trained nurse answered, and as she saw who had knocked she beamed pleasantly. The patient, it appeared, was much brighter. He had already asked for Bab. She was to see him at noon; and, thanking the young woman, Bab hurried on. She must not keep the Lloyds!
The dining-room, like the other rooms in that vast house, was itself vast—a great, dimly lighted apartment where the decorations, all of the richest sort, were a legacy of that morose, astonishing era of bad taste, the late Victorian period. Quartered oak and an embossed bronze wall-paper vied with each other in gloominess; while the sideboard, the table and the chairs, in the style of the early eighties, wore a corresponding air of stodgy, solid richness and melancholy. This effect, too, was heightened by the pictures on the wall, all valuable and each, of course, a still life—the usual fish, the inevitable platter of grapes and oranges, the perpetual overturned basket of flowers. A group of sheep by Verboeckhoven, typically woolly, completed the display.
As Bab, her heart doing a little tattoo in anticipation, passed along the hall, she saw that her aunt and uncle had left the table and were standing on the rug before the fire, their heads together, and talking earnestly. A morning coat, Piccadilly striped trousers and tan spats at the moment attired Mr. Lloyd; but one had but to glance once at the pale, myopic, blasé gentleman to guess that presently he would retire to change, his man helping him, into clothes more suitable for motoring—a lounge suit of tweeds, say, or homespun. Bab, smiling shyly, was just entering the dining-room when Lloyd looked up. Instantly she saw him start. She was certain, too, she heard him whisper swiftly a warning: "Look out!" Then, turning away, Lloyd fell to twirling idly his pale, limp mustaches.
That they were talking about her was manifest. That what they said was not meant for her to hear also was manifest. For an instant she faltered. She felt her color self-consciously betrayed her.
"Oh, here you are!" Lloyd exclaimed in his inconsequent, singsong voice. "We've been waiting for you, you know!"
His voice was pleasant enough, though at the same time he smiled. Subconsciously, if not directly though, Bab began to divine a hint of antagonism in the man. Evidently for some reason he had not as yet accepted her as Miss Elvira had, as his son, too, had accepted her—that is, if the message with the flowers meant anything. However, having greeted him, she turned shyly to her aunt. While waiting Mrs. Lloyd had been frankly studying her.
"So this is our new relative, is it?" she remarked. Afterward she briefly held out a hand. She did not offer to kiss her niece.
Bab felt subtly bewildered. Her aunt was a tall, finely formed woman, a Boadicea in bigness, her eyes a light iris-blue, her mouth small with curiously puckered lips. It was her voice, though, that most held Bab. In it was that note of repression, a studied indolence almost insolent, that women of her class and kind often cultivate. Idly tolerant it was rather than interested, Bab thought.
There were many things that morning that she would have liked to ask about—her father, for example, his boyhood, what he'd been like, who his friends had been. All this and more! It appeared, however, that the topic held but scant interest for the Lloyds, for Lloyd the least of all. A few passing references, to be sure, were made to Bab's dead father; but in every instance these were as lacking in interest, in intimacy, as if uttered by a stranger. In her own affairs, she felt presently, their curiosity was far more robust.