It was a week after this that one afternoon Crabbe brought up to the pretty chintz-hung bedroom, now Bab's, the card of a visitor who was waiting in a pony cart outside. Bab, as she read the name, exclaimed with pleasure.

"Linda Blair!"

"And begging pardon, please," added Crabbe, "the young lady asks particular if you'll see her."

Bab directed him to ask Miss Blair upstairs at once. The Beestons by now were settled for the summer at Byewolde. Beeston himself, entirely recovered from the illness that earlier in the year had threatened to lay him low, every day was to be seen walking or driving about the place. Bab was his constant companion. After his queer behavior the evening of the dance Beeston had resumed toward her his former air of gruff indulgence. To all appearances he might have been the most doting of grandfathers, Bab the most beloved of grandchildren. Miss Elvira, too, was as natural. All that one could descry in the least unusual about her was a smile, grim and covert, that off and on lighted her craggy features.

The week had been a full one for Bab. The engagement David had not yet revealed, but had it been openly known the countryside could not have done more in the way of making Bab's days at Byewolde memorable. Here in the country she had been accepted, been taken for herself, far more than had been the case in the city. One reason for this was that in town the people were engrossed with their own affairs; there time sped too swiftly for them to give much thought to a newcomer. At Eastbourne, however, where the pace was less swift, the various households more closely associated, more of an opportunity was afforded to make Bab feel she was really welcome.

She was left little time to herself. This was as she wished it; for all the new life, new scenes, new activities, thoroughly entertained her. Life in town, brilliant as it had been, had not appealed to her as this did. The reason, perhaps, was that in New York her surroundings had been too new to seem real. She had been a little staggered by her first acquaintance with luxury. The money everything cost had especially bewildered her. Now, however, she had begun to grow accustomed to it all. Money and the luxury it brings had become a commonplace. Already she had begun to lean upon it as a necessity. The animation of her new life, too, had become a second nature. She was rarely unoccupied. Every night she dined out; mornings and afternoons she either rode or drove with her new friends, now not so new either; or, alone with David, the two rambled in his roadster up and down the many unfrequented byroads of the island. Polo practice had begun at the country club; occasionally there was a drag hunt too; and at these events, where the neighborhood turned out in force, David seemed anxious to have her seen.

"You don't mind being dragged round like this, do you?" David asked one day. "I want you to meet everyone, you know."

Bab didn't mind in the least. Now that she had got over her first feeling of strangeness there was nothing she liked more. However, in all this new life, among all her new friends, there was one person who from the first had filled her with a subtle feeling of disquiet. And this person was Linda Blair. Was Linda her friend? Bab wished she knew. She liked the girl; more than that, she admired her. Linda, besides, had been a playmate of David's since childhood. But of late, it seemed to Bab, she had begun to notice about Linda an air of chilly, growing reserve. There was in her expression, too, a veiled disapproval. Bab wondered what she had done to offend her. She was still debating the question when Crabbe ushered in the caller.

"How do you do, Bab?" said Linda, and with a quick smile Bab put out her hand.

"How nice of you to come!" she returned. Determined not to be stiff, or show that she had noticed Linda's air of reserve, Bab tried to make her welcome very real, and she succeeded in this. But Linda's call she soon saw was not merely social. The girl crossed the room hesitantly, a slender, quiet creature, more womanly than girlish; and, having taken the chair by the window that Bab indicated, she sat waiting for Crabbe to withdraw. Obviously there was some special reason for her visit.

"You'll have tea, won't you?" asked Bab.

"Thanks, no," murmured Linda; "I can stay only a minute. I must be going on directly."

Bab dismissed the butler, and with a growing interest seated herself in a chair opposite her visitor. There was a formality about Miss Blair's manner that did not escape her. Though pleasant enough, she had something in her manner that held Bab effectually at a distance.

The conversation at the outset was aimless. To Linda manifestly it was an effort, and at times she came perilously near to rambling. There was to be a luncheon at the country club the week following, and she talked of that. Then, apropos of nothing, she remarked on a picture show she had seen in town, veering from that to a projected run of the drag hounds the following Saturday, the last meet of the season. Bab, in the pauses, led on the talk as best she could. But it was a difficult matter. Suddenly, in the midst of a sentence—something or other about a race meet the month following at the country club—Linda broke off with awkward abruptness. A faint frown of irritation swept across her brows.

"Let's be frank," she said bluntly; "I didn't come here for this. I've something I'd like to ask you." Her dark eyes on the girl opposite her, for a moment she paused. "Bab," she then asked quietly, "what are you doing to David?"

Blunt as the question was, and disconcerting, Bab already had guessed this was the purpose that had brought Linda to see her. She saw now, too, that it must have been her affair with David that had caused Linda's chilly reserve. Linda must have guessed what was happening. The color rushed into her face, which only added to her anger, for she resented showing her feelings.

"What do you mean?" she asked coldly.

"Don't be angry," Linda begged; "I don't mean to offend you. David, you know, has been my friend, my playmate, all my life. It's not just you that I question; I would have asked any girl. Don't you understand? David's a man, of course; but then, too, David's different. I can't stand by and see him hurt. Think how much he's had to bear already."

Bab looked at her in undisguised amazement.

"Hurt?" she repeated. "Why should you think I would hurt him?"

Linda smiled at her gently.

"You know perfectly, Bab."

"I do not," Bab returned crisply; "I know what you suggest, of course—that I am—well, leading him on, to put it vulgarly. Isn't that what you mean by hurting him?"

"Precisely!"

"And you really think I am doing that?"

"No; I only asked whether you are."

Bab with an effort got rid of the note of irritation in her tone. If she must fence she would at least fence with art. So she returned Linda's quiet smile.

"You've known David, as you say, all your life. Why, then, did you come to me? Why didn't you ask him?"

A quick change swept into the other's expressive eyes, and Bab beheld it with surprise. It seemed to Bab almost as if she winced.

"Stop and think! You don't for a moment believe I'd let him know, do you? I at least don't mean to hurt him!"

Bab waited until she had finished.

"Yes," she said, "but that doesn't prevent your hurting me. You still suggest that I am amusing myself at his expense!"

Linda shook her head.

"No; I merely beg you not to! That's why I came here to see you."

"I dare say," said Bab quietly; "but there's one thing you overlook. You seem to forget, Linda, that what in another girl might seem significant, on my part would be harmless. Have you thought of that?"

"Harmless?" interrogated Linda.

"Exactly," smiled Bab. "David, you remember, is my cousin."

It was a clincher. Bab, as she delivered the thrust, rather complimented herself on her cleverness. Somehow, though, the riposte fell short of its expected result. Linda's expression did not alter. Concern was still deeply written in her eyes. Her mouth quivered, setting itself as if again she had winced.

"David doesn't think so," she said.

The retort fairly took Bab's breath away. It was as Linda said. David indeed did not think so; and there dawned on Bab then what she had been guilty of in hiding the truth. David she was to marry, yet virtually she had denied it. What was more, in her denial she had displayed an attitude of defiance that might easily be construed as shame. Again she colored, irritation uppermost in her feelings. She was incensed as much at herself as at Linda. She was angered, besides, that she had agreed to conceal her engagement. Why had she done it? But what annoyed her most was her own clumsiness in handling the present situation.

"David," said Linda slowly, "thinks you love him."

Bab had been seated in a low chair, her head negligently thrown back and her fingers laced together in her lap. Now she got suddenly to her feet.

"I don't see any reason why we should go on like this. I know David loves me, Linda, and I'm going to marry him."

For a brief moment Linda stared at her with every indication of amazement and incredulity. "You marry David!" she gasped. But when Bab assured her this was so, Linda looked neither relieved nor gratified. "Marry David?" she again repeated; and then in her eyes once more rose that vague cloud, a shadow of inward trouble. "Don't think me rude, Bab," said Linda hesitantly, "but will you tell me why you are going to marry him?"

"Why?" echoed Bab. Her discomfort, her righteous indignation perhaps at this point got the better of her. Linda, had she been David's own sister, could not have been more insistent. A sister, indeed, would have thought twice before she'd have ventured to go so far.

"Look here, Linda," said Bab, her voice matching in tone the angry glint in her eye; "I've been frank with you; now you be frank with me. Why do you wish to know all this? Is it because you'd like to marry David yourself?"

The shot went straight to its mark. Bab saw her visitor catch swiftly at her breath.

"I—marry David?" In Linda's air, however, was pain, not discomfiture. The shadow in her eyes darkened perceptibly. "You don't understand, Bab; David and I were brought up together. We've been playmates since I was a baby. If he were my own kin, my own brother, I could not love him more. But that doesn't mean I could marry him. I don't love him that way."

The words, each freighted with significance, thundered their accusation in Bab's startled mind. Linda did not love him that way! Bab, as she sat staring at the speaker, recalled her own reflections in the matter. She, too, had loved David as if bound to him by some tie of blood. She, too, had felt for him that same companionship. Beyond that, though, how else had she felt for him? How else had she loved the man she was to marry? She was still staring at her visitor, the question in her mind still unanswered, when Linda suddenly spoke.

"Why are you marrying him, Bab? Don't you know?"

Bab found her tongue then.

"Because I—I——" She did not finish the sentence, but began another instead. "Why shouldn't I marry him?" she demanded, her voice strong with indignation. "Why shouldn't I marry David? I know he loves me; isn't that enough? I know he isn't marrying me for my money; he's marrying me for myself. That's why I'm marrying David."

Linda still was steadily eyeing her.

"And is that really the reason?"

"It's one reason," returned Bab.

Again Linda studied her with curious intentness.

"Bab," she said finally, her tone as grave as her air, "if there were someone else you loved, really loved, and you could assure yourself he was not marrying you for your money, then would you still marry David?"

Bab's breath in her amazement came swiftly.

"Someone else?" she repeated. Then she demanded: "Why do you ask?"

Linda quietly arose, as she did so picking up the driving gloves she had laid on a table near her. She began now deliberately to put them on. Changing the topic abruptly and ignoring Bab's question, she drifted toward the door. In the hall downstairs she turned with a smile and held out her hand.

"Bayard Varick will be at Eastbourne tomorrow, Bab. He's coming to us for the week-end."