Her face like stone, Bab sat out the remainder of that drive plunged in those gnawing reflections. Beeston, too, seemed stricken into silence. His brows drawn together, his murky eyes peering from beneath their heavy lids, he was slouched down in his seat, staring straight ahead of him. What visions stalked before him, wraiths of his dead, stormy past, Bab had no guess; but that hatred stirred thickly in his heart one had but to see his face to know. Bab, though, gave little heed to that. Deep in her own heart, too, poison bubbled.
It was true! He never, never would marry her but that she had money! And if marry her he did, never would she know whether it was for herself or for her money. She was still thinking of it, mulling it all over and over in her mind, when the motor rolled up to the Beeston door. Beeston, leaning heavily on the footman's arm, alighted. Bab, still plunged in reflection, sat where she was.
"You coming in?" her grandfather demanded.
Bab shook her head. She had something to do, she said; and saying no more Beeston turned away. She watched him hobble up the stairs and, still on the footman's arm, disappear indoors. Then when he was gone, when the door was shut and the servant had returned to the car, Bab, as the man touched his hat to her, sat up, suddenly alert. She knew what she must do.
"Drive to Mrs. Tilney's," she said.
X
The window was open, letting in a flood of the spring day's mellow sunshine, and the leaves of Mr. Mapleson's geraniums in their boxes on the sill quivered delicately in the breeze. There was a lily, too, standing in a dish beside them; and as the air stirred its stalk and slender, rapier-like leaves, they gracefully curved themselves, nodding and curtsying like a maiden. Outside the clocks had just finished striking six.
Mr. Mapleson sat on the bed; and with his chin in his hands, his shoulders sunken, he gazed vacantly at the wall. Never had his lined face looked so gray, so furrowed; never had it seemed so worn. Age in the last few weeks, it seemed, had told heavily on the little man.