The dinner was at eight. At half-past seven, long before the first of the guests possibly could arrive, Bab, dressed and ready, came pitapatting down the broad stairway in her high-heeled little gold slippers. On each cheek a spot of color burned, and Bab's blue eyes, too, gleamed brightly, dancing with suppressed excitement The house during the day had been transformed.

A huge bank of palms behind which the orchestra was to play half filled the hall, and everywhere there were flowers. Bab's breath came swiftly as she saw them. She had not expected anything like this, and, her hand on the stair rail, she halted, gazing about her, thrilled. Seeing her, Crabbe, the white-haired butler, came hurrying from the pantry. Like her, Crabbe, too, was filled with suppressed excitement.

"Mr. David's in the library, please," he announced; "he said I was to let you know." Then his taciturnity for once forgotten, Crabbe smiled broadly. "Wonderful, Miss Barbara, isn't it? The master's orders it was!"

"My grandfather's!" Bab had cried out in astonishment.

All along, it had seemed to her, Beeston had regarded her first dance only in gloomy tolerance, as if he wished the confusion and stir in his household at an end. But apparently she had been mistaken. Of a sudden that evening Beeston had appeared upon the scene, and after a look about him had demanded where the florist was. Then when the man had come running, Beeston, his brows twitching, more than ever grim, had rumbled an order at him. After that for an hour confusion had piled on itself in the household. Then as hurriedly it had passed, while out of it the house had risen transformed, beautified into a bower.

Bab listened intently to what old Crabbe was telling her. In the months she had lived there in that house she had grasped how many-sided was Beeston's dark and formidable nature. And yet, grim as it was and uncompromising, the man had about him, somewhere buried in his half-starved soul, a streak of sentimentalism impulsive and surprising. Of this his orders for the night's decoration seemed an evidence, and Bab still was looking about her in wonder, her appreciation growing, when at the door of the library Beeston himself appeared. Crabbe, breaking off in the midst of a sentence, sought to efface himself, but Beeston had seen him.

"Here, you, Crabbe!" he grunted.

Bearing on the arm of his young English valet, Cater, he came scuffling along the hall, his stick thwacking loudly on the floor, his brow darkened by an angry frown.

"Yes, sir," said Crabbe.

"My son-in-law, Mr. Lloyd—has he come in?" Beeston demanded abruptly.

Crabbe bent toward him deferentially.

"Mr. Lloyd was here, sir, and left. It was an hour ago."

Again a growl left Beeston.

"I know when he left! What I want to know is—has he come back?"

On being informed that Mr. Lloyd had not returned, Beeston struck the floor a vicious blow with his stick.

"He'll be back and I want to see him! You hear? You let me know the instant he comes in!"

"Very good, sir," Crabbe replied and, dismissed with a brusque wave of the hand, withdrew to the pantry. Then, freeing his arm from Cater's, Beeston gave him, too, a knockdown scowl.

"Get out!" he ordered. Cater, as ordered, got out.

Bab was still there on the stairs. That raw, ill-mannered roughness so often Beeston's mood was too old a story now for her to give much heed to it, and she was moving off indifferently when he put a hand swiftly on her arm.

"Wait!" ordered Beeston. "You hear? Wait!" Bab gazed at him wide-eyed. "I want to have a look at you," said Beeston.

His mouth set, his lips protruding on themselves, he stamped up the hall a way, and, pushing a button set there in the wall, sent a flood of light pouring down from the chandelier. Then he came pounding back.

"Now stand where you are!" directed Beeston.

Bab in wonder obeyed. To be inspected, to be looked over, appraised and then admired may perhaps be the object all women have when they array themselves in all the allurement of their dress. But what an inspection this was! Not even in her last survey before the mirror had she given herself a closer, a more critical scrutiny.

"Turn round!" directed Beeston.

Bab turned.

"Now turn the other way!"

Again she turned. Her head poised, wondering, she watched him over her shoulder. Beeston had bent forward now, both his gnarled hands clasped upon his stick, and under their heavy lids his somber eyes pored over her. What his motive was in looking her over like that she had not the faintest notion. Then of a sudden Beeston spoke.

"Huh!" he said, his tone a half-contemptuous growl. "Good-looking, you are, aren't you! A handsome piece, and healthy and strong too! Yes, that's what you are!" Then with a sudden movement, surprising in its swiftness, he bent over and tapped her on the arm. "Lucky for you!" he said. "Lucky for you!" The words still on his lips, he indicated the library door. "Davy's in there. You go to him, you hear?" The next instant he was gone, calling as he stamped along the hall: "Crabbe, Crabbe, come give me an arm up the stairs!"

David, too, had come down early. Since the beginning of the spring, the time when the Lloyds had moved out to their place on Long Island, he had had a room for himself at his grandfather's. Ordinarily the country appealed far more to David than the town, but of late, for various reasons, he seemed to have changed his preference. Bab found him now in the library, his chin upon his hands, a book opened on his knees. The scene with Beeston, an incident as astonishing as it was inexplicable, had left her uncomfortable; but at the sight of David all Bab's animation returned at a bound. Leaning over, she slipped the book away from him.

"Silly!"

"Oh, hello!"

His air as he looked up was bewildered, and again she laughed.

"You weren't reading; your book was upside down! A fine time to be dreaming!"

"Not dreaming; I was thinking," he answered, and though a smile went with the words there was a note in his tone that instantly caught her attention.

"Why, David!" she murmured.

She came round in front of him as she spoke, and again, a second time that evening, her voice was slow with wonder.

"David, what's wrong?" asked Bab.

He shook his head.

"Nothing," he said. Then as he looked her over, from the crown of her soft brown hair to her little golden slippers, David's lips parted.

"Bab, you're lovely tonight!" he murmured. "That gown makes you more than ever lovely!"

Bab dropped him a curtsy.

"Recognize it? It's the same rose gown you liked the other night!"

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!

"Bab, can't you see how I love you!" said David, his voice thick. "Can't you?"

Bab slowly drew in her breath. Her lips parting, her breast heaving with the tumult of emotion that the fire in his had roused, she gazed down at him in troubled bewilderment. No need to tell her what she had done. One look at him was enough.

"Oh, Davy, Davy!" she murmured. "I didn't know! I didn't know!"

The cry came from her eloquent of the distress, the doubt that filled her mind with its conflict. There were indeed many things Bab didn't know! David as a cousin she might love, but did she love him otherwise? Cousin or lover, which was it to be? The weeks, the months he had been with her had shown how perfectly he in his gentleness could be the one; could he now be the other, too? Her eyes grew more troubled!

"I didn't know," said Bab again, murmuring as if to herself. "I didn't think that cousins loved like that!"

She saw him stir, moving uncomfortably.

"Cousins?" he echoed.

"Yes," whispered Bab; "I didn't think——"

A strange look came into his eyes.

"Look at me, Bab," he ordered; and as ordered Bab looked at him. "Now tell me," said David; "tell me the truth! If I—if I were not your cousin, then—then——"

He abruptly broke off. In his tone, too, was now something that filled her with disquiet.

"Then what?" she asked, her brow clouding.

David for a moment did not reply. It was as if he pondered something, as if he debated telling her what hovered on his lips. His dark eyes, turbulent with the feeling that still raised its storm within him, clung to hers as if to search out from her inner consciousness the real truth of what she felt for him.

"You love me, don't you?" he asked suddenly.

She did not answer.

"Bab, tell me you do," he pleaded.

Still she didn't answer.

"Won't you?" he asked.

It was not until he'd asked a third time that she replied.

"I don't know," she faltered then. "I care for you, David, but how I care I can't tell. Don't ask me now. Give me a little time."

His hand she felt suddenly tighten. Outside the doorbell had just rung; then the footsteps of Hibberd, the second man, could be heard squeaking discreetly along the hall.

"Will you tell me tonight?" demanded David.

"I don't know; I'll think," answered Bab.

David slowly drew in his breath.

"Promise me this then," he said laboriously. "Whether it's yes or no, if tonight my father tries to say anything to you promise me you'll not listen to him till you've sent for me! Will you promise?"

"Why, David!" Bab murmured, astonished.

"Have I your promise?"

"Why, yes, but——"

She broke off abruptly. The library door was opening and now Hibberd entered.

"Beg pardon, Miss Barbara, the guests will be arriving."