"Pass the relish, please!"

It was Miss Hultz who spoke. Attired in a smart spring poplin, indisputably chic exquis as advertised, the lady from Bimberg's flashed all her handsome front teeth in a smile directed across the napery of Mrs. Tilney's dinner table. Varick, plunged in a reverie, awoke abruptly.

"I beg pardon?" he inquired.

"The relish," repeated Miss Hultz.

Like others at the boarding house, the lady had of late begun to regard Varick with a new interest, a feeling of sympathy tinged deeply with regret. It was as if something in his aspect had aroused this, and that her heartstrings, touched by it, twanged in a responsive chord:

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?

Not that Varick was either wan or pale, or that fortune had failed to smile on him. On the contrary, at the bank he recently had been promoted, his pay doubled as well. But Miss Hultz had her suspicions of what was in the air; and with her little finger elegantly extended, her manner nice, she was pronging into the relish jar when again she spoke. The pickles, it appeared, had been merely a pretext, a preface.

"Seen the piece in the paper, Mr. Varick?" Varick said no, he hadn't read the evening paper; and hearing this Miss Hultz, her air now arch, impaled a pearly onion on her fork. The piece, she said, was in the society column; and she added: "It's all about a little friend of yours, Mr. V."

In brief it was an account of Bab's dance that absorbed Miss Hultz. Tonight was the night it was to be given.

"Indeed?" Varick remarked.

He sat listening idly, while with a great particularity of detail, as if nothing were too trivial, nothing too insignificant, Miss Hultz related all she had gleaned from the newspaper's account.

"It's to be a dinner dance!" she announced. "You get me, don't you!" Then having let the table grapple with this compelling fact, Miss Hultz leaped to the next illuminating detail. "Covers"—it was the reporter she quoted—"covers will be laid for twenty couples!"

Nor was this all! As Varick sat there, his manner politely attentive but his wits far afield, there sounded dully in his ears all that plethora of sickly, silly inanities with which the society reporter embellishes his spindling effort. "Exclusive! Select! Our Younger Set! Gotham's Upper Tendom!" Bab, little Bab, was to have her dance; and with a growing sorrow at what it signified and in the end must inevitably involve, Varick listened, hardly hearing, while Miss Hultz buoyantly prattled on.

Since the afternoon when she had brought David Lloyd to see Mr. Mapleson, Varick had not heard from Bab, either through the little man or otherwise. Nor had Mr. Mapleson heard either. A fortnight since then had passed; but to the two, in their growing uneasiness, each hour of that time had seemed an age. Nor had Varick's reflections during the fortnight been exactly those of a lover. The condemned awaiting the hour of execution could not have felt more depressed.

It was not only what Bab had said to him, her denunciation, that had swept him off his feet, but it was Mr. Mapleson's revelation about David Lloyd. David a suitor? He had been quick to see what that involved; David, indeed, might be a cripple, but the appeal, the attraction of David's character would go far to obscure the one blemish, his infirmity. Varick knew that. He knew, too, the pity, the compassion, that would warm Bab toward David Lloyd, she with her warm-hearted, impulsive tenderness. He had but a single consolation. That was the thought, the grim reflection, that were ever the fraud found out David's family would at once effectually put an end to any romance. David's father was a perpetual guarantee of that! He let his son marry a nobody—an impostor into the bargain? And there was Beeston too! When Varick thought of him again he smiled grimly, a vision before him of what would happen once Beeston learned the imposture! Yes, but what if Beeston never learned?

Varick was in the midst of this reflection, his brow moist with it, when again Miss Hultz addressed him. About his vis-À-vis there was nothing mean, nothing malicious. Her curiosity for the moment had merely got the better of her. However, that did not in the least alter the awkwardness of the question that Miss Hultz now put to him.

"I say, Mr. Varick," she said. "You're going tonight, of course, ain't you?"

Then, when Varick said no, that he was staying at home, Miss Hultz gave an exclamation.

"Not going?" she ejaculated.

It was so. Bab had not asked him, and if she had he would not have gone. However, Varick saw no reason why all this need be explained, and he was searching in his mind for some evasive answer when of a sudden there was an interruption. Jessup was its author.

"Varick!" said Jessup abruptly.

Having caught Varick's eye then, with a guarded glance he indicated the head of the table where Mr. Mapleson sat. Throughout the colloquy with Miss Hultz the little man had displayed every sign of distaste, not to say disquiet. Now, however, shrugged down in his chair, his face blank, he was staring at a scrap of pasteboard, a visiting card, that Lena, the waitress, had just handed him. Varick, as he looked, felt his heart knock fiercely.

Many seconds passed while Mr. Mapleson sat huddled in silence, gazing at the card. Manifestly what it portended was momentous, for presently he gave vent to a stifled breath, a wheeze. Then with the same suddenness a change sped over him. It was as if some thought, some swift, compelling resolution, had sprung into his mind to steel him and, thrusting back his chair, he arose, his face molded into a look of unflinching determination. Heroic—that was his air! Mr. Mapleson for once looked noble. Walking to the dining-room door, he turned and beckoned to Varick.

"Let me speak to you," said Mr. Mapleson, his voice strongly composed; then passing out into the hall he stood waiting, his face still firm. His eyes, too, were gleaming resolutely. Varick joined him hurriedly. "Look!" said Mr. Mapleson.

His tone was dead, his air quite impassive, as he held out to Varick the visiting card. Varick glanced at it swiftly. Then with Mr. Mapleson at his heels he went up the stairs to see the man who waited in Mrs. Tilney's parlor. It was Lloyd, Beeston's son-in-law.

He was in evening dress, but in his air was nothing that accorded with that festive attire. Planted on the hearthrug, his hat in one hand, his other tugging at his pale mustache, he gave Varick and Mr. Mapleson as they entered a sudden, piercing look. In it was contempt, that and animosity mixed with satisfaction. Lloyd, Senior, one saw, felt triumph.

"Good evening," said Varick quietly.

The gentleman did not even trouble himself to reply. Transferring his glance to Mr. Mapleson, he looked him up and down.

"Are you John Mapleson?" he inquired.

Then when Mr. Mapleson, after moistening his lips, had said yes, Lloyd, his manner brisk, wasted no time in coming to the point.

"I'll be brief with you, Mapleson!" he said brusquely, and as he spoke he turned to Varick. "Varick, I'll be brief with you as well. Unless tonight you two take that girl away from my father-in-law's house uptown I'll see to it myself that she's turned out, bag and baggage! What's more, tomorrow morning I'll turn you all over to the police!"

Then he strode toward the door.

"That's all!" said Mr. Lloyd.