His eyes leaped to hers, a sudden look. A swift speech hovered on his lips, but before he could utter it Bab spoke again.
"Look, Davy, see this too!"
She had bent her head, her hands raised to play with something at her throat—a slender platinum thread from which hung a single pearl, pear-shaped and heavy. Intent on it she did not see the light that leaped into his eyes.
"Wonderful, isn't it!" she murmured, and held it out for him to see. Her face rapt, she looked down at the pearl again. In the hollow of her small pink palm the pearl lay like a dewdrop in the petal of a rose. Such a gem might well have graced a duchess.
"Grandfather gave it to me tonight," she said.
A little laugh, birdlike in its happiness, rippled from her. "What dears you all are! You're all wonderful! All my relatives are!" Then, hardly aware of what she did or what it would mean to him, this new-found cousin, Bab bent above him and laid her hand upon his cheek. The effect was instantaneous.
Poor Bab! In the time, now weeks gone by, when wounded and resentful she had thrown herself in David's way, hoping David might help her to forget, she had not even dreamed the effort ever would lead to this. But it had! At her touch, the soft warmth of her fingers laid upon his cheek, the long smoldering fire pent up in David's heart burst into flame.
"Bab!" She felt him quiver beneath her touch. The next instant, with both his hands he trapped hers in his, the man's strong, slenderly shaped fingers twining themselves with hers. "Bab! Bab!" he whispered. Then he looked up at her, and in David's face was something she had not seen there before. His voice, when again he spoke, rang like a harp string with emotion.
"Not just a cousin, Bab! Not that—can't you see!"
He made no effort, though he still held her hand, to draw her nearer to him. The man's feeling indeed had rocked him to the core, but he was fiercely striving to master it. He was trying to be gentle! He fought himself that he might not frighten her!