VIII

VIIIThat Christmas Day's experience, the first with her new-found family, served as a good index to Bab of what she might expect thereafter from each of her new relatives. It placed accurately, for one thing, the two Lloyds—the husband and the wife. Obviously both her aunt and David's father resented her presence in the house; so that from them, she saw, she must expect nothing. However, though this were true, the division of forces showed she had little to fear. On her side were not only Miss Elvira and her grandfather, there was David Lloyd besides. And of him and his friendliness every instant she felt surer. Time only added to her certainty.Christmas passed swiftly. After that singular encounter with her aunt and uncle the next event in that eventful day was the morning's visit to her grandfather. At her entrance a muffled growl arose from the pillows."Well, my girl!" Beeston mumbled; and with aquick movement, his manner gentle though gruff, he drew down her face to his. Then he seemed to divine, rather than to see, that David was with her. "Hah, Davy!" he cried.David, again teetering on his crutches, lowered himself to the bed."Hello, partner!" he returned.Bab pricked up her ears. Partner, eh? Her grandfather's feeling for David evidently was different from his feeling for David's father! Of his fondness for the cripple she had shortly, in fact, a rather disconcerting proof. Beeston lay there, his dark face lit momentarily with interest at their talk, when of a sudden she felt his gnarled fingers shut themselves on hers. Then with his other hand her grandfather reached out and touched David on the arm."Like her, Davy?" he demanded, a jerk of his head denoting Bab.Startled, she felt herself crimson. David, too, seemed just a bit embarrassed. Then, the humor of it striking him, he threw back his head and roared."That's a nice question!" he laughed, addingthen: "Of course I like Bab! Every bit of her! Why do you ask?"A rumbling growl emerged from the depths of the pillows."I wanted to make sure," avowed her grandfather, grimly frank.Flushed and confused, she was thankful when Beeston saw fit to turn to another topic. The fact is that her new place in life, even with its vast advantages, she had already begun to find trying. Presently she was to find it even more so.Not only that day, it chanced, but for many days to come, a stream of limousines and smart broughams came trundling up to the Beeston door, their occupants, with well-bred though not the less eager interest, curious to have a look at her. Bab's story, it appeared, already was widely known. Of those who came, though, only a few, the most intimate of Miss Elvira's cronies, were admitted; but few as they were, to see them was in each instance an ordeal. Not that they were not kind—they were—but the girl felt as though she were something on exhibit; and to this Miss Elvira innocently contributed. Bab had a full share of good looks,and in addition to this an easy and charming manner; and of this Miss Elvira seemed with complete satisfaction to herself to be aware."Distinguished—a manner, eh?" she snapped at one of her cronies, an antiquated dowager who had remarked on Bab'ssavoir-faire. "Well, why shouldn't she have manner? Wasn't she born a Beeston?"The dowager agreed hastily. Furthest from her intention was the wish to combat Vira Beeston in anything. It had been tried; but never had the result been fortunate.However, David before long came to Bab's rescue. Having observed the way his Aunt Vira was promenading Bab before these ancient cronies of hers, he found occasion to protest vigorously."Why not hire a hall?" he suggested. "Why not hire a band, too; and get a ballyhoo to bark for your show?" Propped up on one crutch, with the other he began to gesticulate derisively. "Here y' are now, the only living Beeston heiress in captivity! Have a look, have a look!"Miss Elvira did her best to scowl."David!" she protested."That's all right!" he retorted. "How would you like it yourself?" His aunt hadn't thought of that! "Think how absurd it is too!" he added. "Why, look at Bab, even she's laughing at you!"After that when there were callers Bab found herself less frequently put to the ordeal of what David irreverently termed prancing. Nor were the callers themselves, even the softest, the most insinuating, allowed to satisfy in her their thinly veiled craving for the romantic. David, too, saw to that. At his heels usually was a small, sad-faced, rowdy-looking Irish terrier, Barney by name. "Sing, Barney!" David would say, pointing a finger at him; and Barney, lifting his head to heaven, would sing, "Ow! Ow,! Ow-wow!" One day when a visiting dowager had made to Bab the brilliantly intelligent remark: "How glad you must be they found you!" David secretly pointed a finger at Barney. Instantly Barney responded."Ow! Ow! Ow-wow!" he sang. "Ow! Ow-wow!""Mercy!" exclaimed the visitor. "What ails the animal?""Oh, he's glad too," answered David—"glad, youknow, Bab was found!" Even the dowager had to laugh.But David always was forgiven. His aunt's cronies all adored him. Pink-cheeked little old ladies in bonnets would simper and smile and look arch when he laughed and joked with them; tall, grenadier-like females, classic dowagers, would titter and shake and look rollicking when he poked good-natured fun at their foibles. He had, indeed, to him a human, friendly side that few who came near him could resist; and day by day Bab felt her liking grow for her crippled cousin—a sunny, cheerful figure, the most courageous she had ever known. However, that was but a part of it. As time went on and those first days turned themselves into weeks Bab began to realize how much David had done and still was doing for her. His consideration never flagged. His thoughtfulness seemed instinctive. All his time; indeed, he stood ready to give to her.It was a vivid period to her—that first month or so of her new life. For one thing it made her realize clearly what the power, the persuasion of wealth like the Beestons' meant. Fifth Avenue, the Fifth Avenue that would have turned up its nose atBab the boarding-house waif, now turned itself inside out for Barbara, old Peter Beeston's grandchild. Modistes, milliners, bootmakers, all that horde of outfitters that batten on the rich, swarmed at the Beeston door. Clothes, hats, gloves, laces, what not were showered upon Bab. She had music lessons, she had dancing lessons; lessons in French, and in Italian, too, she took daily. Miss Elvira saw to all this. Bab, indeed, might have a manner; she might, indeed, be born to it; but even so, Miss Elvira was still determined there should be no mistake about it. Bab at times felt as if her head were whirling."It's ridiculous!" she protested. "I'm just living my life in hatshops! What do I need with so many things?" Indeed, as she pointed out, already she had enough for a dozen débutantes. "You try on that hat!" Miss Elvira directed grimly, adding that by the time she'd finished with Bab, Bab would look like someone.Bab thought so too—either that, or Miss Elvira would destroy them both. However, all that her aunt did could not compare with the aid David lent. What he did was invaluable. It was he who first helped Bab make friends in that big world aboutthem—girls whom he himself knew, men who were his own friends. Miss Elvira had wished to achieve this by a single, magnificent coup."Why not give a dance?" she suggested; but David put his foot down firmly. Bab happened to overhear him."Don't be an old silly!" he laughed, at the same time playfully pinching Miss Elvira's cheek. "A dance when she doesn't know a soul? Why, she'd feel as if she were alone in New York!""Well!" retorted his aunt. "What do you expect when you keep her always to yourself?"The remark seemed provocative. At any rate after this on every pretense David went out of his way to have her meet his friends. To them, it appeared, Bab was for many reasons an object of more than passing interest. Good taste usually restrained them from probing too intimately into her past, but when curiosity got the better of them Bab laughingly revealed what they longed to hear.One girl in particular seemed deeply interested. She was Linda Blair, a bizarre, slender creature, tall, with reddish-brown hair and a thoughtful smile."A boarding house!" she exclaimed, incredulous when Bab told her the nature of Mrs. Tilney's establishment. "Do you really mean it?""Oh, yes," returned Bab, amused; "it was the landlady and one of the boarders who brought me up!""Notreally?" cried the girl, her air shocked. "A clerk and a boarding-house keeper?""They were the two kindest people in the world," returned Bab, and after a gasp the other recovered herself."Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "I didn't understand!"Bab knew she hadn't.Kind, pleasant, friendly like himself, these were the friends that David brought to her. The grim, dark old house after years of silence awoke again. Young voices were heard within it; there were young folk roaming its vast dim rooms and halls. Upstairs one day Beeston, its master, heard unwonted sounds below; and he sat up, frowning curiously. Not for twenty years had he heard such sounds in his house."What's that?" he grumbled.Miss Elvira happened to be with him."It's Barbara," she answered—"she and David. They have some friends with them."There was a pause. "Huh," said Beeston. Then: "The old tomb seems waking up, don't it?" It did, indeed. Now that she had caught her breath, found the time to look about her and to see what life, this new and wonderful existence, held in store for her, Bab's spirits soared buoyantly. And yet even in the midst of it, as the time sped on and the flitting days had changed themselves into weeks, then into that first vivid month, a shadow, a little cloud, began all at once to creep hazily over the spirit of her dream. Varick—where was he? She had not seen him once! She had not even heard from him! Why?In those swiftly changing hours, the time that had so swiftly sped, Bab's greatest delight had been to think that the friends she had made were his friends too; that this life she was living was his life also. Eagerly she waited to see him. Eagerly too, as eagerly as she had wished for that, she had wished to have him see her. Vanity was no fault of Bab's; but she wanted him to know that the Babat Mrs. Tilney's had been transformed, transfigured, into a different sort of a Bab. As well as Miss Elvira she divined what the new hats, the new dresses, all these and the rest had done for her. No need to look in the glass to know that! Already she had seen the eyes, frankly admiring, that followed her wherever she went. Even David had shown it! The first night she had walked into the drawing-room, her slender throat and round, girlish, white shoulders revealed in the first dinner dress she had ever had on, David had stared. For a long moment he had gazed; then his lips parted."Bab!" he'd cried. "Why, you're lovely!"At the compliment, breathed low in admiration, the color had crept faintly into her delicate face, tinting it to a hue lovely in its contrast with the soft pale ivory of her neck and shoulders. If Varick only could have seen her then! But Varick apparently had vanished.After that encounter—her first day's surprising experience with the Lloyds—it was clear to Bab that she was not the only one toward whom their feeling was antagonistic. That Varick was included seemed clear. That he was suspected of somethingseemed as evident. Nor was that all. His attitude had itself been curious.The more she thought of it the more queer seemed his manner when he had learned of her relationship to the Beestons. What had happened? What had he done? Why was he no longer welcome in that house? In learning who she was Bab's first thought had been: "Now I'll see him there! Now he'll come to see me!" But Varick had not come. However, though he hadn't, Bab had said nothing to anyone. Not for worlds would she have shown the ache that day by day, hour by hour, ate gradually into her heart. It was not like him to have done that. Why had he? Then, finally she learned!IXIt was from her grandfather that this revelation came. The holidays had passed. January with its cold and snow was gone; February followed, in turn giving way to a mild, spring-like March; and daily gaining strength, Beeston was up and out of doors. Overwork was the man's chief trouble; his vitality literally had burned him out. What he needed was rest, much rest. Every afternoon, tucked up in the corner of a big motor landau with the top let down, he drove in the park and on Riverside Drive, Bab and David with him. Bab before long learned to look forward with pleasure to these excursions.By now she had lost the feeling of uneasiness that Beeston once had roused in her; and in its place had risen a deep affection for the dark, lonely, grim old man. Of his son he no longer asked now, silenced when once he realized she could tell him nothing; nor did he ever probe her about her own experiences. The past, it seemed, he had acceptedas a closed book. It was as if he had resolved to rouse no sleeping dogs, but meant to take out of what was left him of life whatever happiness it held. Bab, for all his prickly ways, could not have had a kindlier, more devoted relative. Certainly he let her want for nothing. All that money meant was hers. Beeston every day made sure of that."Happy?" he'd rumble at her."Happy!" she'd return.To see her few indeed would have thought any shadow hovered in her heart—not David, not Beeston, at any rate. Perched up between them in the motor, she laughed and chatted, her face radiant, the slim figure in its furs, its jaunty little toque, a charming, animated picture. Indeed, with David's gentleness, with her grandfather's gruff, amused indulgence, there were times when she could almost forget that shadow; when, in fact, she was forgetfully happy, almost as happy as she averred.It was on a day, a ride just such as this, then, that Bab first got that hint about Varick. That day David had not gone with them. The Lloyds having closed their town house, transferring themselves to their country place out on Long Island, David wasspending the day there. Alone with Bab, Beeston all at once grew communicative.A smile, lurking and sardonic, had crept into his face. Curiously, though, as Bab was to learn, it was at himself that Beeston smiled. The man, it appeared, had been trying to do a kindly turn; and this, the cause of his cynical amusement, seemed to have been no less than an effort to reward Mrs. Tilney and Mr. Mapleson for what they'd done for Bab. To his amazement, however, the two had declined, Mrs. Tilney refusing stiffly, not to say indignantly, the offer made by Beeston's lawyers, Mr. Mapleson, for his part, growing suddenly agitated.Bab pricked up her ears. Mr. Mapleson's queerness long had been an old story with her. Of late, though, in her visits to Mrs. Tilney's, she had noted he had grown still more queer. Why was it? What had happened that made them all so queer? Why the last time she had gone there she had happened suddenly on Mr. Mapleson, and the little man was in tears! And then, too, that was but a part of it."Yes, ran up the stairs!" Beeston was saying, still speaking of Mr. Mapleson. "The lawyers tell me the man looked downright terrified!"Bab spoke then. "Dad"—it was thus she called him—"dad," she demanded, "what's wrong? Why Is it that Mr. Varick never comes to our house? He used to, you know!"Varick! At the name she saw a quick gleam spring in Beeston's eyes, and then, his brows thickening, he scowled. But Bab now had forgotten caution in her determination to know. Assuredly there must be some good reason why Varick had avoided her."Huh!" said Beeston abruptly. "What difference is it to you what that fellow does?""Only that I like him, dad! That's enough, isn't it?" Bab answered deliberately; and Beeston, from under his shaggy brows, gave her another sharp stare."Oh, so you like him, eh?" he returned, his eyes lowering. "That's how the land lies, is it? And why do you like him, let me ask?""Why shouldn't I?" Bab retorted quietly. Then without calculating the consequences of what she said, she added: "So would you have liked him if he had been as kind, as pleasant as he always was to me!"The statement seemed to hit Beeston as significant Again his eyes lit darkly and he gazed at her, his face sneering."Huh, I see!" he drawled. "Made love to you, I suppose, down in that boarding house! Eh? So that's it, is it?" At his brusqueness, the blunt, brutal frankness of his scorn, Bab felt all the blood in her body rush hotly into her face. Before she could answer him, however, Beeston spoke again."Yes," he rumbled, "it'd be like a Varick to want to do me dirt!" His voice came thickly, contempt and hatred bubbling together in his tone. "You don't know, I suppose, why that fellow's living in that house? Eh? Well, I'll tell you why. His father set out to trim me and I turned the tables on him. That's why. Lord!" growled Beeston. "And now, I take it, the son wants to get back at me! Trying to get you and your money, isn't he?"But this, it happened, was too much."That's not true!" said Bab. "You shan't say that!"She would have said more but Beeston, with a scornful laugh, cut her short."You don't think, do you, he'd marry you withoutyour money? If you do," he sneered, "then why didn't he do it when he had the chance? He was there in that house with you, wasn't he?"Each word, as he drawled it slowly at her, seemed barbed with a venom calculated to destroy. Her face white, Bab heard him in wonder. Curiously she had no answer. When she tried she could not find the words. Beeston, leaning forward, tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder."Drive home!" he ordered.Was it true? Was it, indeed, that Varick never would marry her except that she had money? She knew it was! How could she disguise it? She herself had said as much in the days when she had been only Bab, Mrs. Tilney's unknown ward. The words, the phrases of that very thought kept recurring to her now. A Varick single and living in a boarding house was far different from a Varick married, living in a four-room Harlem flat!That was it, then. If he married her it would be only for her money? Bab couldn't believe it! He was not that sort. She didn't care who said it, Varick was not a vulgar fortune hunter. Yes, but if he wasn't, then why hadn't he married her when shewas only Bab—Bab of the boarding house? Why? Why? Why?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.XThe 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.At Mrs. Tilney's the boarders had not only seen this, but had noted more than one other change in him. His shy, friendly voice no longer joined in the talk at the dinner table; his timid, frosty little giggle no more was heard to echo their merriment. Banquoat the feast indeed could not have been more dejected. Submerged, downcast, detached, he had altered utterly in the brief two months since Christmas.What it was that weighed on the little man's mind was of course not known to the others. But Mr. Mapleson knew. And it was this knowledge that had worn on him so destructively. Even now at the thought his face grew full of pain; and as he raised a hand to draw it across his brow a penetrating sigh escaped him. "Oh, God!" said Mr. Mapleson.He was still sitting there, the tragic simpleton, that sentimentalist, when of a sudden a quick footfall, a step he well remembered, sounded in the hall. Then a hand rapped swiftly on the door.The limousine bearing Bab to Mrs. Tilney's had come swiftly; as a matter of fact, for her it had come too swiftly. Uptown, when she had made up her mind, she had felt so sure, so certain. The thing to do, she had been convinced up there, was to see Mr. Mapy; he would set everything right. Yes, but now that she had come, what was it he was to set right? What was it he or anyone else could do? She confessed she didn't know.Beeston's sneering, contemptuous speeches still rang echoing in her ears. Even had they been true, the affront in those utterances could not have been more stinging. And again, how did she know they weren't true? A vulgar fortune hunter Beeston had termed him; and what reason had she to believe he wasn't? To be sure, he had neither asked her to marry him nor openly made love to her; but then how did she know he wouldn't if once he got the chance? That was it—if once he got the chance!"Oh, Mr. Mapy!" called Bab. "Oh, Mr. Mapy!"Closing his door she stood there smiling wistfully.The little man's face was a picture. Amazement and alarm together struggled in it—alarm most of all. Then of a sudden, as if from the cloud in her eyes he divined something, Mr. Mapleson scrambled to his feet."What is it?" he wheezed, and caught thickly at his breath. "Bab, they haven't sent you away?"Sent her away? What in the world did he mean?"Don't you understand?" she faltered; "I needed someone to talk to; I had to come to you! Aren't you glad to see me, Mr. Mapy?"Mr. Mapleson wet his lips. Whatever it was that had troubled him seemed again to have laid its burden on his soul; for when he spoke it was with difficulty, his words clacking brokenly between his teeth."Then nothing's happened—nothing up there? They are kind to you? You are happy?" A half-dozen questions came dragging from his lips. After that, of a sudden Mr. Mapleson held out his pipelike arms to her. "Bab, Bab!" he cried. "Tell me you are happy!""Oh, happy enough!" she answered dully.Then she told him what she herself had been told. After that what happened at Mrs. Tilney's was swift.That evening, as Varick came down the stairs to the L road station on the corner and trudged briskly up the side street toward Mrs. Tilney's, a curious thing occurred. Across the way, as he approached, two men had come out from the shadow of a doorway; and after a sharp glance at him they had followed him, matching their step tohis. The night before, the same thing had happened, and the night before that too. What was more, when he had left the bank a moment that morning he had seen one of the pair standing on a corner across Broad Street. What did they want with him? It hardly could have been a coincidence, his seeing them; for on reaching his room he drew the curtain to look and they still were there. Just then a hand rapped at Varick's door; and his face grim, curiously thoughtful, he turned away from the window."I beg pardon," said Mr. Mapleson. His manner hurried, he looked about him sharply. "You are alone?" he inquired. "You have a moment you can spare?"Varick stared at him fixedly. His expression was, in fact, singularly hard and penetrating for one of his usual kindliness; and when he spoke his tone, too, was no less uncompromising."What do you want, Mr. Mapleson?" he asked.The little man, it seemed, was not to be rebuffed."You must come with me!" he said. "You must come with me for a moment!" Catching Varick by the arm he half led, half tugged him down thehall. Then having reached his own door he paused, at the same time peering up at Varick like a little gnome."Be kind! Oh, be kind!" whispered Mr. Mapleson; and with this, having thrust open the door, he pushed Varick into the room, then closed the door behind him. Afterward, wandering along the hall, Mr. Mapleson sat down on the stairs.It was a queer sight, the picture that slight, insignificant figure made huddled there in the dimness of the hall. A ray of light from the gas jet overhead fell upon his face, and Mr. Mapleson, one saw, was smiling rapturously. It was as if all were well now. It was as if, as in the fairy tale, all were to live happy ever afterward. But Mr. Mapy, it appeared, had counted without his host. Perhaps ten minutes had passed, certainly not more than fifteen at the most, and he was still sitting there, his face radiant, when behind him the door suddenly was thrown open. Bab spoke then, and as he heard her Mr. Mapleson got up hurriedly. Both in tone and in manner she seemed abrupt."No, no, you've said enough!" said Bab. "I won't hear you!"Mr. Mapleson's face fell."Why, why!" he exclaimed. "What is it?"Bab went straight toward him, toward the stairs."I'm going," she said, and her voice was like steel. "I'm going," said Bab, saying it between her teeth, and over her shoulder she gave Varick at the same time a look. Its air of disdain Mr. Mapleson did not miss. Neither did he miss the break in her voice, a note of hurt, of outrage, and nervously he put out his hand to halt her. "No, don't stop me!" she said, and pushed his hand aside. "It's true! It's true what they told me about him! He's just what they said he was!"Varick's face was like a mask. He did not speak; he made no effort, so much as by a look, even to answer her.Again after a glance at him Mr. Mapleson stammered: "What is it? Why, what is it?"Bab answered with a laugh."Ask him!" she said; that was all. The next instant she had gone hurrying down the stairs. Then presently, far below, the street door slammed. At the sound, his eyes still on Varick's, Mr. Mapleson shuddered involuntarily."What is it?" once more he whispered. "Tell me what you've done."Varick's face did not alter."I tried to save her," he said; "I did my best I asked her to marry me.""To save her?" echoed the little man, and a gasp escaped him. "To save her!"Varick's face grew still harder."Mapleson, are you mad or what is it? My soul, man; whatever in the world possessed you?"Mr. Mapleson's jaw dropped suddenly. Again the last vestige of color fled from his furrowed face. He gaped at Varick like one bemused."What do you mean?" he whispered.Varick said it then."I've found you out, Mapleson! You had those letters, didn't you? You gave those lawyers their proofs. It was you, wasn't it, who got together all those papers?"Yes, it was Mr. Mapleson who had done all this, but still he did not speak. It was as if his tongue, paralyzed, cleaved to the roof of his mouth."Well," said Varick, "they were all forgeries! You forged them, John Mapleson. You cookedthem all up yourself! Bab is no more Beeston's grandchild than I am!"Mr. Mapleson did not even deny it."Hush!" he whispered, his voice appalled. "What if they should find out! Think what they'd do to her!"XIAnd there you are! Forger and fraud, jailbird too—all these, as Varick charged, Mr. Mapleson had been. Bab, indeed, was no more old Peter Beeston's grandchild than was the little man himself.That night the dinner hour came and went disregarded; time sped and midnight drew near before the colloquy in Mrs. Tilney's top-floor back had ended. Mr. Mapleson admitted everything, bit by bit laying bare the whole of that tragic farce, the story of his past. And what a tale it was! Grotesque you'd call it, an outlandish, ludicrous affair, and yet of a pathos, banal as it was, one could not mistake. For Mr. Mapleson was not by nature in any way a criminal. Neither had he become a jailbird in seeking to serve his own ends. That was his story. Not once but twice the little man had become a forger, and each time he had forged only to help others. It had never been for himself."You mean you got nothing!" questioned Varick."I!" cried Mapleson. His tone was not only surprised, it was resentful. "Certainly not!" he said."Good Lord!" Varick murmured.Absurd as it was, though, Varick could not overlook or disregard the fact that what Mr. Mapleson had done had its sinister side. Not above a week had passed when out of a clear sky the first bolt descended. Fraud and forgery, sad to say, seldom lack effect.At one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon—it was the first half-holiday in April—Varick slammed shut the covers of the ledger he was working on and, his task finished for the day, donned his hat and hurried out into Broad Street. The day was glorious. A mild breeze was stirring, while from overhead, pouring down between the cañon-like walls of the skyscrapers, a burst of sunshine filled all the neighborhood with light. Its radiance contrasted vividly with the lower city's usual dingy dimness, though Varick gave little heed to that. He bustled onward, his face grim. Even when across the street a man stepped out from a doorway and followedhim, matching his step to Varick's, he gave it scant attention. To be watched, to be followed, was not any novelty now. It neither worried him nor made him wonder why he was the subject of that espionage. The night before, shoved under his door at Mrs. Tilney's, he had found the card of no less a person than his one-time friend, David Lloyd. "I'd like to see you," was penciled on the back. But until that morning, some time after he had reached the bank, the full significance of the card and its message had not dawned on him.Why did David Lloyd wish to see him? It was a year since the two had last met, and the friendship that Varick himself had at that time broken up he meant David to see never would be renewed. No Beeston, nor any kin of Beeston, should be a friend of his. He would arrange for that. Blunt, brusque, in fact, he had said good-by, then turned abruptly on his heel, leaving David Lloyd staring after him. This, however, was not the point. Though Varick often had regretted that day's harshness, he had still made no overtures. Neither by word nor by sign had he given the least hint that he wished to end the feud.So what was the meaning of that card? What was it David Lloyd wished of him? It was not until nearly noon that a thought came to him. Then with a staggering certitude the suspicion flashed into his mind. Mr. Mapleson! Had the Lloyds heard something? Was the fraud already known? As murder will out, so, too, would a thing like that cry itself from the housetops."My soul!" said Varick to himself. "If they should know!"That was why he had hurried homeward—to find out if they had. All the way uptown in the crawling L road train he sat mulling over in his mind the tale he had dragged piecemeal out of Mr. Mapleson. Across the aisle a pair of girls, office workers evidently, gave him an appraising look, frankly appreciative; then they began to giggle and whisper together, their eyes stealing consciously toward him. But Varick did not heed.It was a queer tale—that story he had heard from Mr. Mapleson. He hailed, it appeared, from a town in western New York—Buckland, a village near Rochester. Here the little man had come of sound stock, a line of God-fearing, sturdy men, of thrifty,virtuous women. Of the man's family, however, only one besides himself survived. This was a married sister, and to her Mr. Mapleson owed the first of his two forgeries, a crime that had sent him to state's prison, and that he had committed to save her from dishonor and her husband from disgrace.The sister's husband, it appeared, was a politician. He was, furthermore, like many of his ilk, smug, self-satisfied, selfish and dishonest. One might guess offhand his part in the tale. Some countyroad funds having fallen into his hands, the fellow had appropriated them, and then, unable to repay and in imminent peril of exposure, he had appealed in terror to his wife. She, in turn, appealed with a like terror to her brother.One may picture the little man's trembling horror. One may picture, too, his shame. To clear the politician, however, fifteen hundred dollars must be had forthwith; and not having that much, Mr. Mapleson had obtained the amount in the only way he knew how—by forgery. He endorsed a check, the property of his employer. And the employer had been Beeston!It was there, in fact, working in Beeston's officeas a clerk, that Mr. Mapleson had obtained the information he later put to use in his second forgery. He knew Beeston's son—Randolph Beeston that was. He had known, too, of the man's surreptitious marriage.At the time of his first offense he had salved his conscience with the usual sophistries. It was a loan, he had whispered to himself. It would be returned at once. He had indeed paid back all but a few dollars when an accident exposed him. No excuse availed then; and the joke of it, too, was that when once his disgrace became public the politician, with characteristic effrontery, publicly disowned him! Thus broken, beaten, outraged, he had served a five-years' penalty; and emerging from jail, he had renounced not only his family but all else that connected him with the unhappy past. The day he had come forth from Sing Sing was, in fact, the day he first had shown himself at Mrs. Tilney's. And then?There were those first years of Mr. Mapleson's stay in the boarding house. There was the coming, too, of that unknown woman—the widowed girl mother and her child; then the mother's death.Lonely and shy, a man at heart as tender as a woman, the child thus brought to Mr. Mapleson had given him all the love and tenderness that life theretofore seemed to have denied him. And comforted by it, with all that child's affection to cheer him, to heal the hurt he had felt, Mr. Mapleson had sought in every way to repay Bab for all she had been to him. The forgery, his second effort, was a guaranty of this."Diamonds and pearls!" That had been his promise. However, it was not merely to get these that the fraud had been committed. Bab's interest in Varick, the newcomer at Mrs. Tilney's, Mr. Mapleson had been quick to see. Beeston beginning then to advertise for news of his long-lost son, the little man had grasped at the chance of a desperate coup. Bab's people he had not found. What is more, he knew he never would. The story the mother herself had suggested—that she was a widow, that she had come to New York to earn a living, that neither she nor her husband had any kin left living—all this, Mr. Mapleson had assured himself, must be true. His fraud, therefore, had been deliberate. How in his cracked wits, though, he hoped to succeed withit, who knows or who can tell? It is enough that he not only had tricked the Beeston lawyers but, shrewd as Mrs. Tilney was, had managed to cozen her as well. And Bab had been entrenched in the Beeston household as firmly, it seemed, as if she had been born there.But now—— Across the car aisle the two girls giggling and whispering there paused to nudge each other as Varick abruptly arose. Little wonder too! As the guard called his station and he wandered toward the door he had wrung his brows into a scowl, a frown of gathering disquiet. Why had that card been put beneath his door? What was it the Beestons knew? Had they so soon discovered the fraud, or was the message no more than a coincidence? It seemed to Varick inconceivable that David Lloyd should have sought him for any but the one reason. And yet why him? That in itself was startling. Why apply to him? Why not apply to the man responsible? Why?With a swift look, turning as he left the car, Varick glanced behind him. Yes, he still was followed! That man, his shadow, still was there! He sped on toward Mrs. Tilney's, and, racing up the steps, waspanting softly as he shut the street door behind him.Why were they following him? Why had David Lloyd come to Mrs. Tilney's? More than that, if they knew, what was to happen to Bab? A moment later Varick rapped at Mr. Mapleson's door.The Pine Street real-estate office that employed Mr. Mapleson at twenty-eight dollars a week, and long had thought these wages high, still further added to a reputation for free-handed generosity by making each Saturday in the spring and summer a half-holiday for their employees. These for years had been the joy of the little man's life. Swiftly he would put his desk in order, breathe a timid good-day to his fellow-clerks, then speed on his way uptown. There Bab would be waiting him.The years had made little change. She had always been there—in the beginning as the Bab that Mr. Mapy had first known, the child in pigtails and pinafores, hanging over the gate and waving wildly when she saw him coming; then as a little bigger, a little older Bab, a stilty-legged young one who came running up the street to meet him. As soon as Mr. Mapleson had bolted luncheon, gobbling in his haste,he and Bab would sally forth, the man almost as eager as the child, bound together for an afternoon in the Park. Pennies in those days were scarce with the little man, but somehow he still managed to find enough for a voyage in the swan boats, a trip or two in the goat wagons, a mad whirl on the merry-go-round. "Who's got the brass ring? Ride again!" The first time Bab, by skill of arms, speared the treasured prize, Mr. Mapy was nearly beside himself with excitement."Who's got the brass ring? Why, she has!" he cried indignantly when the master of ceremonies monotonously chanted his cry. "My little girl's got it, of course!" snorted Mr. Mapy.But time flies. There came a year when the carrousel even, with its gilded, splendid steeds, its giraffes, its stages, its flying dragons, gave way to other charms, more sedate, older, more grown up. On Saturdays then, Bab and Mr. Mapy wandered elsewhere, Bab now a slender, slim thing with dresses let down to her boot tops. It was to picture galleries and places like that, theaters too, that they now went, to see a good play that Mr. Mapy beforehand had made sure was good. For the littleman, peculiar as he might be, in one respect had no delusions. Whether or not Bab fell heir to her diamonds and pearls, Mr. Mapleson meant her to grow up into a clean-minded, healthy-headed woman—the kind that looks you quietly in the face, clean, unafraid, as clear-eyed as Diana. She should be good, whatever else, vowed Mr. Mapy; and though the term be homely, as homely as his ambition, there is somehow about it a nobility at which even the most cynical of us may not sneer.Ave, John Mapleson!Salutamus!What times the two had then! "Hah! th' play's the thing!" he'd cry, stirred, his face alight at some rousing scene that had depicted virtue victorious and villainy put to rout. "Hah, I told you so!" It made Bab smile to see him. On the other hand, if on the stage things went wrong with some poor girl or some noble fellow was in jeopardy, Mr. Mapy would sit almost breathless, silenced, waiting until all was well. Bab more than once had seen the tears steal down the little man's gray face. However, once the suspense had passed, once all was as it should be, Mr. Mapy, his spirits rising at a bound, would bubble with animation. "Great! Wasn't itgreat! Was ever anything so fine!" For a week he and Bab would talk it over, discussing every scene; then the Saturday half-holiday would come again, and there would be another matinée.Little wonder Mr. Mapy so eagerly waited from week to week. It was his joy. It was the one great, true pleasure of that marred, broken life of his. And when heads began to turn, eyes to glance, lighting with admiration at the slim, tender girl, the young woman now, who went with him on these Saturdays, little Mr. Mapleson's heart fairly bounded, swelling with pride, with loving satisfaction.Of all the days that's in the weekI dearly love but one day——If he who wrote that ballad had only made it Saturday!So thought John Mapleson at any rate. So, too, in the passage of all those years, never once had he let anything stand in the way of that holiday. There was Bab, hanging over the gate, waiting in her pigtails to wave to him. Then there was the stilty-legged little Bab riding the gilded carrousel, scream-ingwith delight when she speared the treasured brass ring. And then, finally, there was Bab the blue-eyed and slender, the white-faced little old man's charming companion—the Bab whom people, smiling in admiration, turned their heads to see. All these, Mr. Mapy! Yes, but where was Bab now? It was a Saturday, yet she was not with him. He wondered with a rising terror what had happened. Where was she? What had befallen her?He was still sitting there, his chin fallen on his breast, when he heard Varick's step upon the stair. A moment later there came his knock. With trembling knees the little man arose, and shambling across the room, he unlocked and opened the door."Well?" he asked monotonously.In the week, the few days that had intervened since the night when he had dragged out of Mr. Mapleson his story, Varick's anger at the little man had drained itself away. For what good now could anger do? After all, too, if it were indeed forgery that Mr. Mapleson had set his hand to, there was no meanness in that fraud. It was merely the impulse of an unbalanced mind. Varick, after he had closed the door behind him, walked quietly across the room.Mr. Mapleson at his approach turned to him, trembling."What do you want?" he asked. "I have told you everything, haven't I?""Listen to me," said Varick. "There was a man here yesterday to see me, and I want to know why. You're not hiding anything, are you? Have these people uptown found out?""Found out?" repeated Mr. Mapleson. He gazed at Varick, his face dull, uncomprehending. "What do you mean?'"Let me tell you something," said Varick, and he laid a hand on Mr. Mapleson's shoulder. "I see you don't know, but for ten days I have been followed—I, you understand! I have not told you before because I was not certain. Now I know. For ten days two men have been watching me!""Watching you?" echoed Mr. Mapleson. It was evident he still did not grasp what the fact conveyed. "Why should they watch you?" he faltered. "Why are they not watching me?"Varick shrugged his shoulders indifferently."They probably are," he answered; "probably they are following all of us!" Then he addedsharply: "But that's not the point! Don't you understand, they've found out! Uptown those people know!"Mr. Mapleson was still staring at him as if bemused."Found out—they?" he faltered. "Why do you think so?" Then as Varick sternly gazed at him Mr. Mapleson put out an appealing hand."Please!" he said, and smiled wearily. "I am very tired and I cannot think. For her sake be a little kind. Won't you tell me now how you know?"So Varick told him. The card David Lloyd had left could have had but one significance. David knew something. For that, for no other reason, would he have come there to Mrs. Tilney's. He had meant to ask Varick what he knew.A sigh, a deep breath, escaped Mr. Mapleson."No, you are wrong," he said heavily. "I know why he came. She brought him here with her.""Bab brought him!" repeated Varick, wondering.Mr. Mapleson nodded slowly. She had brought David to see him, but the significance of this Varick could not see. It merely struck him as odd, yet why odd he could not have told. After all whyshouldn't she? She knew nothing of the fraud. With equal propriety she might have brought any of her supposed relatives to see the little man."What are you going to do?" asked Mr. Mapleson.He was gazing at Varick, his air intent. Again Varick looked at him with wonder."Do?" he repeated.What was there to do? To him at any rate it was evident that those people either knew or suspected, so what could he do but wait? Bab could not be saved. He had tried and failed."You mean you'll do nothing?" persisted Mr. Mapleson. Once more his voice rose shrilly. "But you must!" he cried, adding: "It was for you I did what I did—because of you, Mr. Varick! I felt you cared for her; I thought you would be up there with her watching out for her! I told myself that with you near her I need have no fear! What is it now? Don't you love her? Are you going to stand by idle and let whatever happens happen? I cannot believe it, Mr. Varick!"Varick waited until the outburst was at an end."I can do nothing," he said. "After what thatman Beeston's done to me you know I can't go into that house! Besides that, you know I asked her to marry me, and you heard what she answered. When she comes back here I'll ask her again. That won't be long, I'm certain!"Mr. Mapleson fairly bubbled over."Till she comes back!" he shrilled. "Till she comes back! I tell you she'll never come back. Don't you understand?"Varick heard in sudden wonder. Before he could speak, though, Mr. Mapleson's voice rose to a shriller, keener pitch."I say she'll never come back! You've let her stay up there alone, never going near her, and now that fellow Lloyd wants her. That's why she brought him here—it was for me to see him. She'll marry him before you know it!" Then with a gesture of irrepressible misery and despair Mr. Mapleson seized him by the arm. "What are you going to do?" he demanded."I don't know," said Varick, "but I'll tell you this. If anything happens I'll be there with her!"

VIIIThat Christmas Day's experience, the first with her new-found family, served as a good index to Bab of what she might expect thereafter from each of her new relatives. It placed accurately, for one thing, the two Lloyds—the husband and the wife. Obviously both her aunt and David's father resented her presence in the house; so that from them, she saw, she must expect nothing. However, though this were true, the division of forces showed she had little to fear. On her side were not only Miss Elvira and her grandfather, there was David Lloyd besides. And of him and his friendliness every instant she felt surer. Time only added to her certainty.Christmas passed swiftly. After that singular encounter with her aunt and uncle the next event in that eventful day was the morning's visit to her grandfather. At her entrance a muffled growl arose from the pillows."Well, my girl!" Beeston mumbled; and with aquick movement, his manner gentle though gruff, he drew down her face to his. Then he seemed to divine, rather than to see, that David was with her. "Hah, Davy!" he cried.David, again teetering on his crutches, lowered himself to the bed."Hello, partner!" he returned.Bab pricked up her ears. Partner, eh? Her grandfather's feeling for David evidently was different from his feeling for David's father! Of his fondness for the cripple she had shortly, in fact, a rather disconcerting proof. Beeston lay there, his dark face lit momentarily with interest at their talk, when of a sudden she felt his gnarled fingers shut themselves on hers. Then with his other hand her grandfather reached out and touched David on the arm."Like her, Davy?" he demanded, a jerk of his head denoting Bab.Startled, she felt herself crimson. David, too, seemed just a bit embarrassed. Then, the humor of it striking him, he threw back his head and roared."That's a nice question!" he laughed, addingthen: "Of course I like Bab! Every bit of her! Why do you ask?"A rumbling growl emerged from the depths of the pillows."I wanted to make sure," avowed her grandfather, grimly frank.Flushed and confused, she was thankful when Beeston saw fit to turn to another topic. The fact is that her new place in life, even with its vast advantages, she had already begun to find trying. Presently she was to find it even more so.Not only that day, it chanced, but for many days to come, a stream of limousines and smart broughams came trundling up to the Beeston door, their occupants, with well-bred though not the less eager interest, curious to have a look at her. Bab's story, it appeared, already was widely known. Of those who came, though, only a few, the most intimate of Miss Elvira's cronies, were admitted; but few as they were, to see them was in each instance an ordeal. Not that they were not kind—they were—but the girl felt as though she were something on exhibit; and to this Miss Elvira innocently contributed. Bab had a full share of good looks,and in addition to this an easy and charming manner; and of this Miss Elvira seemed with complete satisfaction to herself to be aware."Distinguished—a manner, eh?" she snapped at one of her cronies, an antiquated dowager who had remarked on Bab'ssavoir-faire. "Well, why shouldn't she have manner? Wasn't she born a Beeston?"The dowager agreed hastily. Furthest from her intention was the wish to combat Vira Beeston in anything. It had been tried; but never had the result been fortunate.However, David before long came to Bab's rescue. Having observed the way his Aunt Vira was promenading Bab before these ancient cronies of hers, he found occasion to protest vigorously."Why not hire a hall?" he suggested. "Why not hire a band, too; and get a ballyhoo to bark for your show?" Propped up on one crutch, with the other he began to gesticulate derisively. "Here y' are now, the only living Beeston heiress in captivity! Have a look, have a look!"Miss Elvira did her best to scowl."David!" she protested."That's all right!" he retorted. "How would you like it yourself?" His aunt hadn't thought of that! "Think how absurd it is too!" he added. "Why, look at Bab, even she's laughing at you!"After that when there were callers Bab found herself less frequently put to the ordeal of what David irreverently termed prancing. Nor were the callers themselves, even the softest, the most insinuating, allowed to satisfy in her their thinly veiled craving for the romantic. David, too, saw to that. At his heels usually was a small, sad-faced, rowdy-looking Irish terrier, Barney by name. "Sing, Barney!" David would say, pointing a finger at him; and Barney, lifting his head to heaven, would sing, "Ow! Ow,! Ow-wow!" One day when a visiting dowager had made to Bab the brilliantly intelligent remark: "How glad you must be they found you!" David secretly pointed a finger at Barney. Instantly Barney responded."Ow! Ow! Ow-wow!" he sang. "Ow! Ow-wow!""Mercy!" exclaimed the visitor. "What ails the animal?""Oh, he's glad too," answered David—"glad, youknow, Bab was found!" Even the dowager had to laugh.But David always was forgiven. His aunt's cronies all adored him. Pink-cheeked little old ladies in bonnets would simper and smile and look arch when he laughed and joked with them; tall, grenadier-like females, classic dowagers, would titter and shake and look rollicking when he poked good-natured fun at their foibles. He had, indeed, to him a human, friendly side that few who came near him could resist; and day by day Bab felt her liking grow for her crippled cousin—a sunny, cheerful figure, the most courageous she had ever known. However, that was but a part of it. As time went on and those first days turned themselves into weeks Bab began to realize how much David had done and still was doing for her. His consideration never flagged. His thoughtfulness seemed instinctive. All his time; indeed, he stood ready to give to her.It was a vivid period to her—that first month or so of her new life. For one thing it made her realize clearly what the power, the persuasion of wealth like the Beestons' meant. Fifth Avenue, the Fifth Avenue that would have turned up its nose atBab the boarding-house waif, now turned itself inside out for Barbara, old Peter Beeston's grandchild. Modistes, milliners, bootmakers, all that horde of outfitters that batten on the rich, swarmed at the Beeston door. Clothes, hats, gloves, laces, what not were showered upon Bab. She had music lessons, she had dancing lessons; lessons in French, and in Italian, too, she took daily. Miss Elvira saw to all this. Bab, indeed, might have a manner; she might, indeed, be born to it; but even so, Miss Elvira was still determined there should be no mistake about it. Bab at times felt as if her head were whirling."It's ridiculous!" she protested. "I'm just living my life in hatshops! What do I need with so many things?" Indeed, as she pointed out, already she had enough for a dozen débutantes. "You try on that hat!" Miss Elvira directed grimly, adding that by the time she'd finished with Bab, Bab would look like someone.Bab thought so too—either that, or Miss Elvira would destroy them both. However, all that her aunt did could not compare with the aid David lent. What he did was invaluable. It was he who first helped Bab make friends in that big world aboutthem—girls whom he himself knew, men who were his own friends. Miss Elvira had wished to achieve this by a single, magnificent coup."Why not give a dance?" she suggested; but David put his foot down firmly. Bab happened to overhear him."Don't be an old silly!" he laughed, at the same time playfully pinching Miss Elvira's cheek. "A dance when she doesn't know a soul? Why, she'd feel as if she were alone in New York!""Well!" retorted his aunt. "What do you expect when you keep her always to yourself?"The remark seemed provocative. At any rate after this on every pretense David went out of his way to have her meet his friends. To them, it appeared, Bab was for many reasons an object of more than passing interest. Good taste usually restrained them from probing too intimately into her past, but when curiosity got the better of them Bab laughingly revealed what they longed to hear.One girl in particular seemed deeply interested. She was Linda Blair, a bizarre, slender creature, tall, with reddish-brown hair and a thoughtful smile."A boarding house!" she exclaimed, incredulous when Bab told her the nature of Mrs. Tilney's establishment. "Do you really mean it?""Oh, yes," returned Bab, amused; "it was the landlady and one of the boarders who brought me up!""Notreally?" cried the girl, her air shocked. "A clerk and a boarding-house keeper?""They were the two kindest people in the world," returned Bab, and after a gasp the other recovered herself."Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "I didn't understand!"Bab knew she hadn't.Kind, pleasant, friendly like himself, these were the friends that David brought to her. The grim, dark old house after years of silence awoke again. Young voices were heard within it; there were young folk roaming its vast dim rooms and halls. Upstairs one day Beeston, its master, heard unwonted sounds below; and he sat up, frowning curiously. Not for twenty years had he heard such sounds in his house."What's that?" he grumbled.Miss Elvira happened to be with him."It's Barbara," she answered—"she and David. They have some friends with them."There was a pause. "Huh," said Beeston. Then: "The old tomb seems waking up, don't it?" It did, indeed. Now that she had caught her breath, found the time to look about her and to see what life, this new and wonderful existence, held in store for her, Bab's spirits soared buoyantly. And yet even in the midst of it, as the time sped on and the flitting days had changed themselves into weeks, then into that first vivid month, a shadow, a little cloud, began all at once to creep hazily over the spirit of her dream. Varick—where was he? She had not seen him once! She had not even heard from him! Why?In those swiftly changing hours, the time that had so swiftly sped, Bab's greatest delight had been to think that the friends she had made were his friends too; that this life she was living was his life also. Eagerly she waited to see him. Eagerly too, as eagerly as she had wished for that, she had wished to have him see her. Vanity was no fault of Bab's; but she wanted him to know that the Babat Mrs. Tilney's had been transformed, transfigured, into a different sort of a Bab. As well as Miss Elvira she divined what the new hats, the new dresses, all these and the rest had done for her. No need to look in the glass to know that! Already she had seen the eyes, frankly admiring, that followed her wherever she went. Even David had shown it! The first night she had walked into the drawing-room, her slender throat and round, girlish, white shoulders revealed in the first dinner dress she had ever had on, David had stared. For a long moment he had gazed; then his lips parted."Bab!" he'd cried. "Why, you're lovely!"At the compliment, breathed low in admiration, the color had crept faintly into her delicate face, tinting it to a hue lovely in its contrast with the soft pale ivory of her neck and shoulders. If Varick only could have seen her then! But Varick apparently had vanished.After that encounter—her first day's surprising experience with the Lloyds—it was clear to Bab that she was not the only one toward whom their feeling was antagonistic. That Varick was included seemed clear. That he was suspected of somethingseemed as evident. Nor was that all. His attitude had itself been curious.The more she thought of it the more queer seemed his manner when he had learned of her relationship to the Beestons. What had happened? What had he done? Why was he no longer welcome in that house? In learning who she was Bab's first thought had been: "Now I'll see him there! Now he'll come to see me!" But Varick had not come. However, though he hadn't, Bab had said nothing to anyone. Not for worlds would she have shown the ache that day by day, hour by hour, ate gradually into her heart. It was not like him to have done that. Why had he? Then, finally she learned!

That Christmas Day's experience, the first with her new-found family, served as a good index to Bab of what she might expect thereafter from each of her new relatives. It placed accurately, for one thing, the two Lloyds—the husband and the wife. Obviously both her aunt and David's father resented her presence in the house; so that from them, she saw, she must expect nothing. However, though this were true, the division of forces showed she had little to fear. On her side were not only Miss Elvira and her grandfather, there was David Lloyd besides. And of him and his friendliness every instant she felt surer. Time only added to her certainty.

Christmas passed swiftly. After that singular encounter with her aunt and uncle the next event in that eventful day was the morning's visit to her grandfather. At her entrance a muffled growl arose from the pillows.

"Well, my girl!" Beeston mumbled; and with aquick movement, his manner gentle though gruff, he drew down her face to his. Then he seemed to divine, rather than to see, that David was with her. "Hah, Davy!" he cried.

David, again teetering on his crutches, lowered himself to the bed.

"Hello, partner!" he returned.

Bab pricked up her ears. Partner, eh? Her grandfather's feeling for David evidently was different from his feeling for David's father! Of his fondness for the cripple she had shortly, in fact, a rather disconcerting proof. Beeston lay there, his dark face lit momentarily with interest at their talk, when of a sudden she felt his gnarled fingers shut themselves on hers. Then with his other hand her grandfather reached out and touched David on the arm.

"Like her, Davy?" he demanded, a jerk of his head denoting Bab.

Startled, she felt herself crimson. David, too, seemed just a bit embarrassed. Then, the humor of it striking him, he threw back his head and roared.

"That's a nice question!" he laughed, addingthen: "Of course I like Bab! Every bit of her! Why do you ask?"

A rumbling growl emerged from the depths of the pillows.

"I wanted to make sure," avowed her grandfather, grimly frank.

Flushed and confused, she was thankful when Beeston saw fit to turn to another topic. The fact is that her new place in life, even with its vast advantages, she had already begun to find trying. Presently she was to find it even more so.

Not only that day, it chanced, but for many days to come, a stream of limousines and smart broughams came trundling up to the Beeston door, their occupants, with well-bred though not the less eager interest, curious to have a look at her. Bab's story, it appeared, already was widely known. Of those who came, though, only a few, the most intimate of Miss Elvira's cronies, were admitted; but few as they were, to see them was in each instance an ordeal. Not that they were not kind—they were—but the girl felt as though she were something on exhibit; and to this Miss Elvira innocently contributed. Bab had a full share of good looks,and in addition to this an easy and charming manner; and of this Miss Elvira seemed with complete satisfaction to herself to be aware.

"Distinguished—a manner, eh?" she snapped at one of her cronies, an antiquated dowager who had remarked on Bab'ssavoir-faire. "Well, why shouldn't she have manner? Wasn't she born a Beeston?"

The dowager agreed hastily. Furthest from her intention was the wish to combat Vira Beeston in anything. It had been tried; but never had the result been fortunate.

However, David before long came to Bab's rescue. Having observed the way his Aunt Vira was promenading Bab before these ancient cronies of hers, he found occasion to protest vigorously.

"Why not hire a hall?" he suggested. "Why not hire a band, too; and get a ballyhoo to bark for your show?" Propped up on one crutch, with the other he began to gesticulate derisively. "Here y' are now, the only living Beeston heiress in captivity! Have a look, have a look!"

Miss Elvira did her best to scowl.

"David!" she protested.

"That's all right!" he retorted. "How would you like it yourself?" His aunt hadn't thought of that! "Think how absurd it is too!" he added. "Why, look at Bab, even she's laughing at you!"

After that when there were callers Bab found herself less frequently put to the ordeal of what David irreverently termed prancing. Nor were the callers themselves, even the softest, the most insinuating, allowed to satisfy in her their thinly veiled craving for the romantic. David, too, saw to that. At his heels usually was a small, sad-faced, rowdy-looking Irish terrier, Barney by name. "Sing, Barney!" David would say, pointing a finger at him; and Barney, lifting his head to heaven, would sing, "Ow! Ow,! Ow-wow!" One day when a visiting dowager had made to Bab the brilliantly intelligent remark: "How glad you must be they found you!" David secretly pointed a finger at Barney. Instantly Barney responded.

"Ow! Ow! Ow-wow!" he sang. "Ow! Ow-wow!"

"Mercy!" exclaimed the visitor. "What ails the animal?"

"Oh, he's glad too," answered David—"glad, youknow, Bab was found!" Even the dowager had to laugh.

But David always was forgiven. His aunt's cronies all adored him. Pink-cheeked little old ladies in bonnets would simper and smile and look arch when he laughed and joked with them; tall, grenadier-like females, classic dowagers, would titter and shake and look rollicking when he poked good-natured fun at their foibles. He had, indeed, to him a human, friendly side that few who came near him could resist; and day by day Bab felt her liking grow for her crippled cousin—a sunny, cheerful figure, the most courageous she had ever known. However, that was but a part of it. As time went on and those first days turned themselves into weeks Bab began to realize how much David had done and still was doing for her. His consideration never flagged. His thoughtfulness seemed instinctive. All his time; indeed, he stood ready to give to her.

It was a vivid period to her—that first month or so of her new life. For one thing it made her realize clearly what the power, the persuasion of wealth like the Beestons' meant. Fifth Avenue, the Fifth Avenue that would have turned up its nose atBab the boarding-house waif, now turned itself inside out for Barbara, old Peter Beeston's grandchild. Modistes, milliners, bootmakers, all that horde of outfitters that batten on the rich, swarmed at the Beeston door. Clothes, hats, gloves, laces, what not were showered upon Bab. She had music lessons, she had dancing lessons; lessons in French, and in Italian, too, she took daily. Miss Elvira saw to all this. Bab, indeed, might have a manner; she might, indeed, be born to it; but even so, Miss Elvira was still determined there should be no mistake about it. Bab at times felt as if her head were whirling.

"It's ridiculous!" she protested. "I'm just living my life in hatshops! What do I need with so many things?" Indeed, as she pointed out, already she had enough for a dozen débutantes. "You try on that hat!" Miss Elvira directed grimly, adding that by the time she'd finished with Bab, Bab would look like someone.

Bab thought so too—either that, or Miss Elvira would destroy them both. However, all that her aunt did could not compare with the aid David lent. What he did was invaluable. It was he who first helped Bab make friends in that big world aboutthem—girls whom he himself knew, men who were his own friends. Miss Elvira had wished to achieve this by a single, magnificent coup.

"Why not give a dance?" she suggested; but David put his foot down firmly. Bab happened to overhear him.

"Don't be an old silly!" he laughed, at the same time playfully pinching Miss Elvira's cheek. "A dance when she doesn't know a soul? Why, she'd feel as if she were alone in New York!"

"Well!" retorted his aunt. "What do you expect when you keep her always to yourself?"

The remark seemed provocative. At any rate after this on every pretense David went out of his way to have her meet his friends. To them, it appeared, Bab was for many reasons an object of more than passing interest. Good taste usually restrained them from probing too intimately into her past, but when curiosity got the better of them Bab laughingly revealed what they longed to hear.

One girl in particular seemed deeply interested. She was Linda Blair, a bizarre, slender creature, tall, with reddish-brown hair and a thoughtful smile.

"A boarding house!" she exclaimed, incredulous when Bab told her the nature of Mrs. Tilney's establishment. "Do you really mean it?"

"Oh, yes," returned Bab, amused; "it was the landlady and one of the boarders who brought me up!"

"Notreally?" cried the girl, her air shocked. "A clerk and a boarding-house keeper?"

"They were the two kindest people in the world," returned Bab, and after a gasp the other recovered herself.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "I didn't understand!"

Bab knew she hadn't.

Kind, pleasant, friendly like himself, these were the friends that David brought to her. The grim, dark old house after years of silence awoke again. Young voices were heard within it; there were young folk roaming its vast dim rooms and halls. Upstairs one day Beeston, its master, heard unwonted sounds below; and he sat up, frowning curiously. Not for twenty years had he heard such sounds in his house.

"What's that?" he grumbled.

Miss Elvira happened to be with him.

"It's Barbara," she answered—"she and David. They have some friends with them."

There was a pause. "Huh," said Beeston. Then: "The old tomb seems waking up, don't it?" It did, indeed. Now that she had caught her breath, found the time to look about her and to see what life, this new and wonderful existence, held in store for her, Bab's spirits soared buoyantly. And yet even in the midst of it, as the time sped on and the flitting days had changed themselves into weeks, then into that first vivid month, a shadow, a little cloud, began all at once to creep hazily over the spirit of her dream. Varick—where was he? She had not seen him once! She had not even heard from him! Why?

In those swiftly changing hours, the time that had so swiftly sped, Bab's greatest delight had been to think that the friends she had made were his friends too; that this life she was living was his life also. Eagerly she waited to see him. Eagerly too, as eagerly as she had wished for that, she had wished to have him see her. Vanity was no fault of Bab's; but she wanted him to know that the Babat Mrs. Tilney's had been transformed, transfigured, into a different sort of a Bab. As well as Miss Elvira she divined what the new hats, the new dresses, all these and the rest had done for her. No need to look in the glass to know that! Already she had seen the eyes, frankly admiring, that followed her wherever she went. Even David had shown it! The first night she had walked into the drawing-room, her slender throat and round, girlish, white shoulders revealed in the first dinner dress she had ever had on, David had stared. For a long moment he had gazed; then his lips parted.

"Bab!" he'd cried. "Why, you're lovely!"

At the compliment, breathed low in admiration, the color had crept faintly into her delicate face, tinting it to a hue lovely in its contrast with the soft pale ivory of her neck and shoulders. If Varick only could have seen her then! But Varick apparently had vanished.

After that encounter—her first day's surprising experience with the Lloyds—it was clear to Bab that she was not the only one toward whom their feeling was antagonistic. That Varick was included seemed clear. That he was suspected of somethingseemed as evident. Nor was that all. His attitude had itself been curious.

The more she thought of it the more queer seemed his manner when he had learned of her relationship to the Beestons. What had happened? What had he done? Why was he no longer welcome in that house? In learning who she was Bab's first thought had been: "Now I'll see him there! Now he'll come to see me!" But Varick had not come. However, though he hadn't, Bab had said nothing to anyone. Not for worlds would she have shown the ache that day by day, hour by hour, ate gradually into her heart. It was not like him to have done that. Why had he? Then, finally she learned!

IXIt was from her grandfather that this revelation came. The holidays had passed. January with its cold and snow was gone; February followed, in turn giving way to a mild, spring-like March; and daily gaining strength, Beeston was up and out of doors. Overwork was the man's chief trouble; his vitality literally had burned him out. What he needed was rest, much rest. Every afternoon, tucked up in the corner of a big motor landau with the top let down, he drove in the park and on Riverside Drive, Bab and David with him. Bab before long learned to look forward with pleasure to these excursions.By now she had lost the feeling of uneasiness that Beeston once had roused in her; and in its place had risen a deep affection for the dark, lonely, grim old man. Of his son he no longer asked now, silenced when once he realized she could tell him nothing; nor did he ever probe her about her own experiences. The past, it seemed, he had acceptedas a closed book. It was as if he had resolved to rouse no sleeping dogs, but meant to take out of what was left him of life whatever happiness it held. Bab, for all his prickly ways, could not have had a kindlier, more devoted relative. Certainly he let her want for nothing. All that money meant was hers. Beeston every day made sure of that."Happy?" he'd rumble at her."Happy!" she'd return.To see her few indeed would have thought any shadow hovered in her heart—not David, not Beeston, at any rate. Perched up between them in the motor, she laughed and chatted, her face radiant, the slim figure in its furs, its jaunty little toque, a charming, animated picture. Indeed, with David's gentleness, with her grandfather's gruff, amused indulgence, there were times when she could almost forget that shadow; when, in fact, she was forgetfully happy, almost as happy as she averred.It was on a day, a ride just such as this, then, that Bab first got that hint about Varick. That day David had not gone with them. The Lloyds having closed their town house, transferring themselves to their country place out on Long Island, David wasspending the day there. Alone with Bab, Beeston all at once grew communicative.A smile, lurking and sardonic, had crept into his face. Curiously, though, as Bab was to learn, it was at himself that Beeston smiled. The man, it appeared, had been trying to do a kindly turn; and this, the cause of his cynical amusement, seemed to have been no less than an effort to reward Mrs. Tilney and Mr. Mapleson for what they'd done for Bab. To his amazement, however, the two had declined, Mrs. Tilney refusing stiffly, not to say indignantly, the offer made by Beeston's lawyers, Mr. Mapleson, for his part, growing suddenly agitated.Bab pricked up her ears. Mr. Mapleson's queerness long had been an old story with her. Of late, though, in her visits to Mrs. Tilney's, she had noted he had grown still more queer. Why was it? What had happened that made them all so queer? Why the last time she had gone there she had happened suddenly on Mr. Mapleson, and the little man was in tears! And then, too, that was but a part of it."Yes, ran up the stairs!" Beeston was saying, still speaking of Mr. Mapleson. "The lawyers tell me the man looked downright terrified!"Bab spoke then. "Dad"—it was thus she called him—"dad," she demanded, "what's wrong? Why Is it that Mr. Varick never comes to our house? He used to, you know!"Varick! At the name she saw a quick gleam spring in Beeston's eyes, and then, his brows thickening, he scowled. But Bab now had forgotten caution in her determination to know. Assuredly there must be some good reason why Varick had avoided her."Huh!" said Beeston abruptly. "What difference is it to you what that fellow does?""Only that I like him, dad! That's enough, isn't it?" Bab answered deliberately; and Beeston, from under his shaggy brows, gave her another sharp stare."Oh, so you like him, eh?" he returned, his eyes lowering. "That's how the land lies, is it? And why do you like him, let me ask?""Why shouldn't I?" Bab retorted quietly. Then without calculating the consequences of what she said, she added: "So would you have liked him if he had been as kind, as pleasant as he always was to me!"The statement seemed to hit Beeston as significant Again his eyes lit darkly and he gazed at her, his face sneering."Huh, I see!" he drawled. "Made love to you, I suppose, down in that boarding house! Eh? So that's it, is it?" At his brusqueness, the blunt, brutal frankness of his scorn, Bab felt all the blood in her body rush hotly into her face. Before she could answer him, however, Beeston spoke again."Yes," he rumbled, "it'd be like a Varick to want to do me dirt!" His voice came thickly, contempt and hatred bubbling together in his tone. "You don't know, I suppose, why that fellow's living in that house? Eh? Well, I'll tell you why. His father set out to trim me and I turned the tables on him. That's why. Lord!" growled Beeston. "And now, I take it, the son wants to get back at me! Trying to get you and your money, isn't he?"But this, it happened, was too much."That's not true!" said Bab. "You shan't say that!"She would have said more but Beeston, with a scornful laugh, cut her short."You don't think, do you, he'd marry you withoutyour money? If you do," he sneered, "then why didn't he do it when he had the chance? He was there in that house with you, wasn't he?"Each word, as he drawled it slowly at her, seemed barbed with a venom calculated to destroy. Her face white, Bab heard him in wonder. Curiously she had no answer. When she tried she could not find the words. Beeston, leaning forward, tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder."Drive home!" he ordered.Was it true? Was it, indeed, that Varick never would marry her except that she had money? She knew it was! How could she disguise it? She herself had said as much in the days when she had been only Bab, Mrs. Tilney's unknown ward. The words, the phrases of that very thought kept recurring to her now. A Varick single and living in a boarding house was far different from a Varick married, living in a four-room Harlem flat!That was it, then. If he married her it would be only for her money? Bab couldn't believe it! He was not that sort. She didn't care who said it, Varick was not a vulgar fortune hunter. Yes, but if he wasn't, then why hadn't he married her when shewas only Bab—Bab of the boarding house? Why? Why? Why?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.

It was from her grandfather that this revelation came. The holidays had passed. January with its cold and snow was gone; February followed, in turn giving way to a mild, spring-like March; and daily gaining strength, Beeston was up and out of doors. Overwork was the man's chief trouble; his vitality literally had burned him out. What he needed was rest, much rest. Every afternoon, tucked up in the corner of a big motor landau with the top let down, he drove in the park and on Riverside Drive, Bab and David with him. Bab before long learned to look forward with pleasure to these excursions.

By now she had lost the feeling of uneasiness that Beeston once had roused in her; and in its place had risen a deep affection for the dark, lonely, grim old man. Of his son he no longer asked now, silenced when once he realized she could tell him nothing; nor did he ever probe her about her own experiences. The past, it seemed, he had acceptedas a closed book. It was as if he had resolved to rouse no sleeping dogs, but meant to take out of what was left him of life whatever happiness it held. Bab, for all his prickly ways, could not have had a kindlier, more devoted relative. Certainly he let her want for nothing. All that money meant was hers. Beeston every day made sure of that.

"Happy?" he'd rumble at her.

"Happy!" she'd return.

To see her few indeed would have thought any shadow hovered in her heart—not David, not Beeston, at any rate. Perched up between them in the motor, she laughed and chatted, her face radiant, the slim figure in its furs, its jaunty little toque, a charming, animated picture. Indeed, with David's gentleness, with her grandfather's gruff, amused indulgence, there were times when she could almost forget that shadow; when, in fact, she was forgetfully happy, almost as happy as she averred.

It was on a day, a ride just such as this, then, that Bab first got that hint about Varick. That day David had not gone with them. The Lloyds having closed their town house, transferring themselves to their country place out on Long Island, David wasspending the day there. Alone with Bab, Beeston all at once grew communicative.

A smile, lurking and sardonic, had crept into his face. Curiously, though, as Bab was to learn, it was at himself that Beeston smiled. The man, it appeared, had been trying to do a kindly turn; and this, the cause of his cynical amusement, seemed to have been no less than an effort to reward Mrs. Tilney and Mr. Mapleson for what they'd done for Bab. To his amazement, however, the two had declined, Mrs. Tilney refusing stiffly, not to say indignantly, the offer made by Beeston's lawyers, Mr. Mapleson, for his part, growing suddenly agitated.

Bab pricked up her ears. Mr. Mapleson's queerness long had been an old story with her. Of late, though, in her visits to Mrs. Tilney's, she had noted he had grown still more queer. Why was it? What had happened that made them all so queer? Why the last time she had gone there she had happened suddenly on Mr. Mapleson, and the little man was in tears! And then, too, that was but a part of it.

"Yes, ran up the stairs!" Beeston was saying, still speaking of Mr. Mapleson. "The lawyers tell me the man looked downright terrified!"

Bab spoke then. "Dad"—it was thus she called him—"dad," she demanded, "what's wrong? Why Is it that Mr. Varick never comes to our house? He used to, you know!"

Varick! At the name she saw a quick gleam spring in Beeston's eyes, and then, his brows thickening, he scowled. But Bab now had forgotten caution in her determination to know. Assuredly there must be some good reason why Varick had avoided her.

"Huh!" said Beeston abruptly. "What difference is it to you what that fellow does?"

"Only that I like him, dad! That's enough, isn't it?" Bab answered deliberately; and Beeston, from under his shaggy brows, gave her another sharp stare.

"Oh, so you like him, eh?" he returned, his eyes lowering. "That's how the land lies, is it? And why do you like him, let me ask?"

"Why shouldn't I?" Bab retorted quietly. Then without calculating the consequences of what she said, she added: "So would you have liked him if he had been as kind, as pleasant as he always was to me!"

The statement seemed to hit Beeston as significant Again his eyes lit darkly and he gazed at her, his face sneering.

"Huh, I see!" he drawled. "Made love to you, I suppose, down in that boarding house! Eh? So that's it, is it?" At his brusqueness, the blunt, brutal frankness of his scorn, Bab felt all the blood in her body rush hotly into her face. Before she could answer him, however, Beeston spoke again.

"Yes," he rumbled, "it'd be like a Varick to want to do me dirt!" His voice came thickly, contempt and hatred bubbling together in his tone. "You don't know, I suppose, why that fellow's living in that house? Eh? Well, I'll tell you why. His father set out to trim me and I turned the tables on him. That's why. Lord!" growled Beeston. "And now, I take it, the son wants to get back at me! Trying to get you and your money, isn't he?"

But this, it happened, was too much.

"That's not true!" said Bab. "You shan't say that!"

She would have said more but Beeston, with a scornful laugh, cut her short.

"You don't think, do you, he'd marry you withoutyour money? If you do," he sneered, "then why didn't he do it when he had the chance? He was there in that house with you, wasn't he?"

Each word, as he drawled it slowly at her, seemed barbed with a venom calculated to destroy. Her face white, Bab heard him in wonder. Curiously she had no answer. When she tried she could not find the words. Beeston, leaning forward, tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder.

"Drive home!" he ordered.

Was it true? Was it, indeed, that Varick never would marry her except that she had money? She knew it was! How could she disguise it? She herself had said as much in the days when she had been only Bab, Mrs. Tilney's unknown ward. The words, the phrases of that very thought kept recurring to her now. A Varick single and living in a boarding house was far different from a Varick married, living in a four-room Harlem flat!

That was it, then. If he married her it would be only for her money? Bab couldn't believe it! He was not that sort. She didn't care who said it, Varick was not a vulgar fortune hunter. Yes, but if he wasn't, then why hadn't he married her when shewas only Bab—Bab of the boarding house? Why? Why? Why?

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.

XThe 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.At Mrs. Tilney's the boarders had not only seen this, but had noted more than one other change in him. His shy, friendly voice no longer joined in the talk at the dinner table; his timid, frosty little giggle no more was heard to echo their merriment. Banquoat the feast indeed could not have been more dejected. Submerged, downcast, detached, he had altered utterly in the brief two months since Christmas.What it was that weighed on the little man's mind was of course not known to the others. But Mr. Mapleson knew. And it was this knowledge that had worn on him so destructively. Even now at the thought his face grew full of pain; and as he raised a hand to draw it across his brow a penetrating sigh escaped him. "Oh, God!" said Mr. Mapleson.He was still sitting there, the tragic simpleton, that sentimentalist, when of a sudden a quick footfall, a step he well remembered, sounded in the hall. Then a hand rapped swiftly on the door.The limousine bearing Bab to Mrs. Tilney's had come swiftly; as a matter of fact, for her it had come too swiftly. Uptown, when she had made up her mind, she had felt so sure, so certain. The thing to do, she had been convinced up there, was to see Mr. Mapy; he would set everything right. Yes, but now that she had come, what was it he was to set right? What was it he or anyone else could do? She confessed she didn't know.Beeston's sneering, contemptuous speeches still rang echoing in her ears. Even had they been true, the affront in those utterances could not have been more stinging. And again, how did she know they weren't true? A vulgar fortune hunter Beeston had termed him; and what reason had she to believe he wasn't? To be sure, he had neither asked her to marry him nor openly made love to her; but then how did she know he wouldn't if once he got the chance? That was it—if once he got the chance!"Oh, Mr. Mapy!" called Bab. "Oh, Mr. Mapy!"Closing his door she stood there smiling wistfully.The little man's face was a picture. Amazement and alarm together struggled in it—alarm most of all. Then of a sudden, as if from the cloud in her eyes he divined something, Mr. Mapleson scrambled to his feet."What is it?" he wheezed, and caught thickly at his breath. "Bab, they haven't sent you away?"Sent her away? What in the world did he mean?"Don't you understand?" she faltered; "I needed someone to talk to; I had to come to you! Aren't you glad to see me, Mr. Mapy?"Mr. Mapleson wet his lips. Whatever it was that had troubled him seemed again to have laid its burden on his soul; for when he spoke it was with difficulty, his words clacking brokenly between his teeth."Then nothing's happened—nothing up there? They are kind to you? You are happy?" A half-dozen questions came dragging from his lips. After that, of a sudden Mr. Mapleson held out his pipelike arms to her. "Bab, Bab!" he cried. "Tell me you are happy!""Oh, happy enough!" she answered dully.Then she told him what she herself had been told. After that what happened at Mrs. Tilney's was swift.That evening, as Varick came down the stairs to the L road station on the corner and trudged briskly up the side street toward Mrs. Tilney's, a curious thing occurred. Across the way, as he approached, two men had come out from the shadow of a doorway; and after a sharp glance at him they had followed him, matching their step tohis. The night before, the same thing had happened, and the night before that too. What was more, when he had left the bank a moment that morning he had seen one of the pair standing on a corner across Broad Street. What did they want with him? It hardly could have been a coincidence, his seeing them; for on reaching his room he drew the curtain to look and they still were there. Just then a hand rapped at Varick's door; and his face grim, curiously thoughtful, he turned away from the window."I beg pardon," said Mr. Mapleson. His manner hurried, he looked about him sharply. "You are alone?" he inquired. "You have a moment you can spare?"Varick stared at him fixedly. His expression was, in fact, singularly hard and penetrating for one of his usual kindliness; and when he spoke his tone, too, was no less uncompromising."What do you want, Mr. Mapleson?" he asked.The little man, it seemed, was not to be rebuffed."You must come with me!" he said. "You must come with me for a moment!" Catching Varick by the arm he half led, half tugged him down thehall. Then having reached his own door he paused, at the same time peering up at Varick like a little gnome."Be kind! Oh, be kind!" whispered Mr. Mapleson; and with this, having thrust open the door, he pushed Varick into the room, then closed the door behind him. Afterward, wandering along the hall, Mr. Mapleson sat down on the stairs.It was a queer sight, the picture that slight, insignificant figure made huddled there in the dimness of the hall. A ray of light from the gas jet overhead fell upon his face, and Mr. Mapleson, one saw, was smiling rapturously. It was as if all were well now. It was as if, as in the fairy tale, all were to live happy ever afterward. But Mr. Mapy, it appeared, had counted without his host. Perhaps ten minutes had passed, certainly not more than fifteen at the most, and he was still sitting there, his face radiant, when behind him the door suddenly was thrown open. Bab spoke then, and as he heard her Mr. Mapleson got up hurriedly. Both in tone and in manner she seemed abrupt."No, no, you've said enough!" said Bab. "I won't hear you!"Mr. Mapleson's face fell."Why, why!" he exclaimed. "What is it?"Bab went straight toward him, toward the stairs."I'm going," she said, and her voice was like steel. "I'm going," said Bab, saying it between her teeth, and over her shoulder she gave Varick at the same time a look. Its air of disdain Mr. Mapleson did not miss. Neither did he miss the break in her voice, a note of hurt, of outrage, and nervously he put out his hand to halt her. "No, don't stop me!" she said, and pushed his hand aside. "It's true! It's true what they told me about him! He's just what they said he was!"Varick's face was like a mask. He did not speak; he made no effort, so much as by a look, even to answer her.Again after a glance at him Mr. Mapleson stammered: "What is it? Why, what is it?"Bab answered with a laugh."Ask him!" she said; that was all. The next instant she had gone hurrying down the stairs. Then presently, far below, the street door slammed. At the sound, his eyes still on Varick's, Mr. Mapleson shuddered involuntarily."What is it?" once more he whispered. "Tell me what you've done."Varick's face did not alter."I tried to save her," he said; "I did my best I asked her to marry me.""To save her?" echoed the little man, and a gasp escaped him. "To save her!"Varick's face grew still harder."Mapleson, are you mad or what is it? My soul, man; whatever in the world possessed you?"Mr. Mapleson's jaw dropped suddenly. Again the last vestige of color fled from his furrowed face. He gaped at Varick like one bemused."What do you mean?" he whispered.Varick said it then."I've found you out, Mapleson! You had those letters, didn't you? You gave those lawyers their proofs. It was you, wasn't it, who got together all those papers?"Yes, it was Mr. Mapleson who had done all this, but still he did not speak. It was as if his tongue, paralyzed, cleaved to the roof of his mouth."Well," said Varick, "they were all forgeries! You forged them, John Mapleson. You cookedthem all up yourself! Bab is no more Beeston's grandchild than I am!"Mr. Mapleson did not even deny it."Hush!" he whispered, his voice appalled. "What if they should find out! Think what they'd do to her!"

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.

At Mrs. Tilney's the boarders had not only seen this, but had noted more than one other change in him. His shy, friendly voice no longer joined in the talk at the dinner table; his timid, frosty little giggle no more was heard to echo their merriment. Banquoat the feast indeed could not have been more dejected. Submerged, downcast, detached, he had altered utterly in the brief two months since Christmas.

What it was that weighed on the little man's mind was of course not known to the others. But Mr. Mapleson knew. And it was this knowledge that had worn on him so destructively. Even now at the thought his face grew full of pain; and as he raised a hand to draw it across his brow a penetrating sigh escaped him. "Oh, God!" said Mr. Mapleson.

He was still sitting there, the tragic simpleton, that sentimentalist, when of a sudden a quick footfall, a step he well remembered, sounded in the hall. Then a hand rapped swiftly on the door.

The limousine bearing Bab to Mrs. Tilney's had come swiftly; as a matter of fact, for her it had come too swiftly. Uptown, when she had made up her mind, she had felt so sure, so certain. The thing to do, she had been convinced up there, was to see Mr. Mapy; he would set everything right. Yes, but now that she had come, what was it he was to set right? What was it he or anyone else could do? She confessed she didn't know.

Beeston's sneering, contemptuous speeches still rang echoing in her ears. Even had they been true, the affront in those utterances could not have been more stinging. And again, how did she know they weren't true? A vulgar fortune hunter Beeston had termed him; and what reason had she to believe he wasn't? To be sure, he had neither asked her to marry him nor openly made love to her; but then how did she know he wouldn't if once he got the chance? That was it—if once he got the chance!

"Oh, Mr. Mapy!" called Bab. "Oh, Mr. Mapy!"

Closing his door she stood there smiling wistfully.

The little man's face was a picture. Amazement and alarm together struggled in it—alarm most of all. Then of a sudden, as if from the cloud in her eyes he divined something, Mr. Mapleson scrambled to his feet.

"What is it?" he wheezed, and caught thickly at his breath. "Bab, they haven't sent you away?"

Sent her away? What in the world did he mean?

"Don't you understand?" she faltered; "I needed someone to talk to; I had to come to you! Aren't you glad to see me, Mr. Mapy?"

Mr. Mapleson wet his lips. Whatever it was that had troubled him seemed again to have laid its burden on his soul; for when he spoke it was with difficulty, his words clacking brokenly between his teeth.

"Then nothing's happened—nothing up there? They are kind to you? You are happy?" A half-dozen questions came dragging from his lips. After that, of a sudden Mr. Mapleson held out his pipelike arms to her. "Bab, Bab!" he cried. "Tell me you are happy!"

"Oh, happy enough!" she answered dully.

Then she told him what she herself had been told. After that what happened at Mrs. Tilney's was swift.

That evening, as Varick came down the stairs to the L road station on the corner and trudged briskly up the side street toward Mrs. Tilney's, a curious thing occurred. Across the way, as he approached, two men had come out from the shadow of a doorway; and after a sharp glance at him they had followed him, matching their step tohis. The night before, the same thing had happened, and the night before that too. What was more, when he had left the bank a moment that morning he had seen one of the pair standing on a corner across Broad Street. What did they want with him? It hardly could have been a coincidence, his seeing them; for on reaching his room he drew the curtain to look and they still were there. Just then a hand rapped at Varick's door; and his face grim, curiously thoughtful, he turned away from the window.

"I beg pardon," said Mr. Mapleson. His manner hurried, he looked about him sharply. "You are alone?" he inquired. "You have a moment you can spare?"

Varick stared at him fixedly. His expression was, in fact, singularly hard and penetrating for one of his usual kindliness; and when he spoke his tone, too, was no less uncompromising.

"What do you want, Mr. Mapleson?" he asked.

The little man, it seemed, was not to be rebuffed.

"You must come with me!" he said. "You must come with me for a moment!" Catching Varick by the arm he half led, half tugged him down thehall. Then having reached his own door he paused, at the same time peering up at Varick like a little gnome.

"Be kind! Oh, be kind!" whispered Mr. Mapleson; and with this, having thrust open the door, he pushed Varick into the room, then closed the door behind him. Afterward, wandering along the hall, Mr. Mapleson sat down on the stairs.

It was a queer sight, the picture that slight, insignificant figure made huddled there in the dimness of the hall. A ray of light from the gas jet overhead fell upon his face, and Mr. Mapleson, one saw, was smiling rapturously. It was as if all were well now. It was as if, as in the fairy tale, all were to live happy ever afterward. But Mr. Mapy, it appeared, had counted without his host. Perhaps ten minutes had passed, certainly not more than fifteen at the most, and he was still sitting there, his face radiant, when behind him the door suddenly was thrown open. Bab spoke then, and as he heard her Mr. Mapleson got up hurriedly. Both in tone and in manner she seemed abrupt.

"No, no, you've said enough!" said Bab. "I won't hear you!"

Mr. Mapleson's face fell.

"Why, why!" he exclaimed. "What is it?"

Bab went straight toward him, toward the stairs.

"I'm going," she said, and her voice was like steel. "I'm going," said Bab, saying it between her teeth, and over her shoulder she gave Varick at the same time a look. Its air of disdain Mr. Mapleson did not miss. Neither did he miss the break in her voice, a note of hurt, of outrage, and nervously he put out his hand to halt her. "No, don't stop me!" she said, and pushed his hand aside. "It's true! It's true what they told me about him! He's just what they said he was!"

Varick's face was like a mask. He did not speak; he made no effort, so much as by a look, even to answer her.

Again after a glance at him Mr. Mapleson stammered: "What is it? Why, what is it?"

Bab answered with a laugh.

"Ask him!" she said; that was all. The next instant she had gone hurrying down the stairs. Then presently, far below, the street door slammed. At the sound, his eyes still on Varick's, Mr. Mapleson shuddered involuntarily.

"What is it?" once more he whispered. "Tell me what you've done."

Varick's face did not alter.

"I tried to save her," he said; "I did my best I asked her to marry me."

"To save her?" echoed the little man, and a gasp escaped him. "To save her!"

Varick's face grew still harder.

"Mapleson, are you mad or what is it? My soul, man; whatever in the world possessed you?"

Mr. Mapleson's jaw dropped suddenly. Again the last vestige of color fled from his furrowed face. He gaped at Varick like one bemused.

"What do you mean?" he whispered.

Varick said it then.

"I've found you out, Mapleson! You had those letters, didn't you? You gave those lawyers their proofs. It was you, wasn't it, who got together all those papers?"

Yes, it was Mr. Mapleson who had done all this, but still he did not speak. It was as if his tongue, paralyzed, cleaved to the roof of his mouth.

"Well," said Varick, "they were all forgeries! You forged them, John Mapleson. You cookedthem all up yourself! Bab is no more Beeston's grandchild than I am!"

Mr. Mapleson did not even deny it.

"Hush!" he whispered, his voice appalled. "What if they should find out! Think what they'd do to her!"

XIAnd there you are! Forger and fraud, jailbird too—all these, as Varick charged, Mr. Mapleson had been. Bab, indeed, was no more old Peter Beeston's grandchild than was the little man himself.That night the dinner hour came and went disregarded; time sped and midnight drew near before the colloquy in Mrs. Tilney's top-floor back had ended. Mr. Mapleson admitted everything, bit by bit laying bare the whole of that tragic farce, the story of his past. And what a tale it was! Grotesque you'd call it, an outlandish, ludicrous affair, and yet of a pathos, banal as it was, one could not mistake. For Mr. Mapleson was not by nature in any way a criminal. Neither had he become a jailbird in seeking to serve his own ends. That was his story. Not once but twice the little man had become a forger, and each time he had forged only to help others. It had never been for himself."You mean you got nothing!" questioned Varick."I!" cried Mapleson. His tone was not only surprised, it was resentful. "Certainly not!" he said."Good Lord!" Varick murmured.Absurd as it was, though, Varick could not overlook or disregard the fact that what Mr. Mapleson had done had its sinister side. Not above a week had passed when out of a clear sky the first bolt descended. Fraud and forgery, sad to say, seldom lack effect.At one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon—it was the first half-holiday in April—Varick slammed shut the covers of the ledger he was working on and, his task finished for the day, donned his hat and hurried out into Broad Street. The day was glorious. A mild breeze was stirring, while from overhead, pouring down between the cañon-like walls of the skyscrapers, a burst of sunshine filled all the neighborhood with light. Its radiance contrasted vividly with the lower city's usual dingy dimness, though Varick gave little heed to that. He bustled onward, his face grim. Even when across the street a man stepped out from a doorway and followedhim, matching his step to Varick's, he gave it scant attention. To be watched, to be followed, was not any novelty now. It neither worried him nor made him wonder why he was the subject of that espionage. The night before, shoved under his door at Mrs. Tilney's, he had found the card of no less a person than his one-time friend, David Lloyd. "I'd like to see you," was penciled on the back. But until that morning, some time after he had reached the bank, the full significance of the card and its message had not dawned on him.Why did David Lloyd wish to see him? It was a year since the two had last met, and the friendship that Varick himself had at that time broken up he meant David to see never would be renewed. No Beeston, nor any kin of Beeston, should be a friend of his. He would arrange for that. Blunt, brusque, in fact, he had said good-by, then turned abruptly on his heel, leaving David Lloyd staring after him. This, however, was not the point. Though Varick often had regretted that day's harshness, he had still made no overtures. Neither by word nor by sign had he given the least hint that he wished to end the feud.So what was the meaning of that card? What was it David Lloyd wished of him? It was not until nearly noon that a thought came to him. Then with a staggering certitude the suspicion flashed into his mind. Mr. Mapleson! Had the Lloyds heard something? Was the fraud already known? As murder will out, so, too, would a thing like that cry itself from the housetops."My soul!" said Varick to himself. "If they should know!"That was why he had hurried homeward—to find out if they had. All the way uptown in the crawling L road train he sat mulling over in his mind the tale he had dragged piecemeal out of Mr. Mapleson. Across the aisle a pair of girls, office workers evidently, gave him an appraising look, frankly appreciative; then they began to giggle and whisper together, their eyes stealing consciously toward him. But Varick did not heed.It was a queer tale—that story he had heard from Mr. Mapleson. He hailed, it appeared, from a town in western New York—Buckland, a village near Rochester. Here the little man had come of sound stock, a line of God-fearing, sturdy men, of thrifty,virtuous women. Of the man's family, however, only one besides himself survived. This was a married sister, and to her Mr. Mapleson owed the first of his two forgeries, a crime that had sent him to state's prison, and that he had committed to save her from dishonor and her husband from disgrace.The sister's husband, it appeared, was a politician. He was, furthermore, like many of his ilk, smug, self-satisfied, selfish and dishonest. One might guess offhand his part in the tale. Some countyroad funds having fallen into his hands, the fellow had appropriated them, and then, unable to repay and in imminent peril of exposure, he had appealed in terror to his wife. She, in turn, appealed with a like terror to her brother.One may picture the little man's trembling horror. One may picture, too, his shame. To clear the politician, however, fifteen hundred dollars must be had forthwith; and not having that much, Mr. Mapleson had obtained the amount in the only way he knew how—by forgery. He endorsed a check, the property of his employer. And the employer had been Beeston!It was there, in fact, working in Beeston's officeas a clerk, that Mr. Mapleson had obtained the information he later put to use in his second forgery. He knew Beeston's son—Randolph Beeston that was. He had known, too, of the man's surreptitious marriage.At the time of his first offense he had salved his conscience with the usual sophistries. It was a loan, he had whispered to himself. It would be returned at once. He had indeed paid back all but a few dollars when an accident exposed him. No excuse availed then; and the joke of it, too, was that when once his disgrace became public the politician, with characteristic effrontery, publicly disowned him! Thus broken, beaten, outraged, he had served a five-years' penalty; and emerging from jail, he had renounced not only his family but all else that connected him with the unhappy past. The day he had come forth from Sing Sing was, in fact, the day he first had shown himself at Mrs. Tilney's. And then?There were those first years of Mr. Mapleson's stay in the boarding house. There was the coming, too, of that unknown woman—the widowed girl mother and her child; then the mother's death.Lonely and shy, a man at heart as tender as a woman, the child thus brought to Mr. Mapleson had given him all the love and tenderness that life theretofore seemed to have denied him. And comforted by it, with all that child's affection to cheer him, to heal the hurt he had felt, Mr. Mapleson had sought in every way to repay Bab for all she had been to him. The forgery, his second effort, was a guaranty of this."Diamonds and pearls!" That had been his promise. However, it was not merely to get these that the fraud had been committed. Bab's interest in Varick, the newcomer at Mrs. Tilney's, Mr. Mapleson had been quick to see. Beeston beginning then to advertise for news of his long-lost son, the little man had grasped at the chance of a desperate coup. Bab's people he had not found. What is more, he knew he never would. The story the mother herself had suggested—that she was a widow, that she had come to New York to earn a living, that neither she nor her husband had any kin left living—all this, Mr. Mapleson had assured himself, must be true. His fraud, therefore, had been deliberate. How in his cracked wits, though, he hoped to succeed withit, who knows or who can tell? It is enough that he not only had tricked the Beeston lawyers but, shrewd as Mrs. Tilney was, had managed to cozen her as well. And Bab had been entrenched in the Beeston household as firmly, it seemed, as if she had been born there.But now—— Across the car aisle the two girls giggling and whispering there paused to nudge each other as Varick abruptly arose. Little wonder too! As the guard called his station and he wandered toward the door he had wrung his brows into a scowl, a frown of gathering disquiet. Why had that card been put beneath his door? What was it the Beestons knew? Had they so soon discovered the fraud, or was the message no more than a coincidence? It seemed to Varick inconceivable that David Lloyd should have sought him for any but the one reason. And yet why him? That in itself was startling. Why apply to him? Why not apply to the man responsible? Why?With a swift look, turning as he left the car, Varick glanced behind him. Yes, he still was followed! That man, his shadow, still was there! He sped on toward Mrs. Tilney's, and, racing up the steps, waspanting softly as he shut the street door behind him.Why were they following him? Why had David Lloyd come to Mrs. Tilney's? More than that, if they knew, what was to happen to Bab? A moment later Varick rapped at Mr. Mapleson's door.The Pine Street real-estate office that employed Mr. Mapleson at twenty-eight dollars a week, and long had thought these wages high, still further added to a reputation for free-handed generosity by making each Saturday in the spring and summer a half-holiday for their employees. These for years had been the joy of the little man's life. Swiftly he would put his desk in order, breathe a timid good-day to his fellow-clerks, then speed on his way uptown. There Bab would be waiting him.The years had made little change. She had always been there—in the beginning as the Bab that Mr. Mapy had first known, the child in pigtails and pinafores, hanging over the gate and waving wildly when she saw him coming; then as a little bigger, a little older Bab, a stilty-legged young one who came running up the street to meet him. As soon as Mr. Mapleson had bolted luncheon, gobbling in his haste,he and Bab would sally forth, the man almost as eager as the child, bound together for an afternoon in the Park. Pennies in those days were scarce with the little man, but somehow he still managed to find enough for a voyage in the swan boats, a trip or two in the goat wagons, a mad whirl on the merry-go-round. "Who's got the brass ring? Ride again!" The first time Bab, by skill of arms, speared the treasured prize, Mr. Mapy was nearly beside himself with excitement."Who's got the brass ring? Why, she has!" he cried indignantly when the master of ceremonies monotonously chanted his cry. "My little girl's got it, of course!" snorted Mr. Mapy.But time flies. There came a year when the carrousel even, with its gilded, splendid steeds, its giraffes, its stages, its flying dragons, gave way to other charms, more sedate, older, more grown up. On Saturdays then, Bab and Mr. Mapy wandered elsewhere, Bab now a slender, slim thing with dresses let down to her boot tops. It was to picture galleries and places like that, theaters too, that they now went, to see a good play that Mr. Mapy beforehand had made sure was good. For the littleman, peculiar as he might be, in one respect had no delusions. Whether or not Bab fell heir to her diamonds and pearls, Mr. Mapleson meant her to grow up into a clean-minded, healthy-headed woman—the kind that looks you quietly in the face, clean, unafraid, as clear-eyed as Diana. She should be good, whatever else, vowed Mr. Mapy; and though the term be homely, as homely as his ambition, there is somehow about it a nobility at which even the most cynical of us may not sneer.Ave, John Mapleson!Salutamus!What times the two had then! "Hah! th' play's the thing!" he'd cry, stirred, his face alight at some rousing scene that had depicted virtue victorious and villainy put to rout. "Hah, I told you so!" It made Bab smile to see him. On the other hand, if on the stage things went wrong with some poor girl or some noble fellow was in jeopardy, Mr. Mapy would sit almost breathless, silenced, waiting until all was well. Bab more than once had seen the tears steal down the little man's gray face. However, once the suspense had passed, once all was as it should be, Mr. Mapy, his spirits rising at a bound, would bubble with animation. "Great! Wasn't itgreat! Was ever anything so fine!" For a week he and Bab would talk it over, discussing every scene; then the Saturday half-holiday would come again, and there would be another matinée.Little wonder Mr. Mapy so eagerly waited from week to week. It was his joy. It was the one great, true pleasure of that marred, broken life of his. And when heads began to turn, eyes to glance, lighting with admiration at the slim, tender girl, the young woman now, who went with him on these Saturdays, little Mr. Mapleson's heart fairly bounded, swelling with pride, with loving satisfaction.Of all the days that's in the weekI dearly love but one day——If he who wrote that ballad had only made it Saturday!So thought John Mapleson at any rate. So, too, in the passage of all those years, never once had he let anything stand in the way of that holiday. There was Bab, hanging over the gate, waiting in her pigtails to wave to him. Then there was the stilty-legged little Bab riding the gilded carrousel, scream-ingwith delight when she speared the treasured brass ring. And then, finally, there was Bab the blue-eyed and slender, the white-faced little old man's charming companion—the Bab whom people, smiling in admiration, turned their heads to see. All these, Mr. Mapy! Yes, but where was Bab now? It was a Saturday, yet she was not with him. He wondered with a rising terror what had happened. Where was she? What had befallen her?He was still sitting there, his chin fallen on his breast, when he heard Varick's step upon the stair. A moment later there came his knock. With trembling knees the little man arose, and shambling across the room, he unlocked and opened the door."Well?" he asked monotonously.In the week, the few days that had intervened since the night when he had dragged out of Mr. Mapleson his story, Varick's anger at the little man had drained itself away. For what good now could anger do? After all, too, if it were indeed forgery that Mr. Mapleson had set his hand to, there was no meanness in that fraud. It was merely the impulse of an unbalanced mind. Varick, after he had closed the door behind him, walked quietly across the room.Mr. Mapleson at his approach turned to him, trembling."What do you want?" he asked. "I have told you everything, haven't I?""Listen to me," said Varick. "There was a man here yesterday to see me, and I want to know why. You're not hiding anything, are you? Have these people uptown found out?""Found out?" repeated Mr. Mapleson. He gazed at Varick, his face dull, uncomprehending. "What do you mean?'"Let me tell you something," said Varick, and he laid a hand on Mr. Mapleson's shoulder. "I see you don't know, but for ten days I have been followed—I, you understand! I have not told you before because I was not certain. Now I know. For ten days two men have been watching me!""Watching you?" echoed Mr. Mapleson. It was evident he still did not grasp what the fact conveyed. "Why should they watch you?" he faltered. "Why are they not watching me?"Varick shrugged his shoulders indifferently."They probably are," he answered; "probably they are following all of us!" Then he addedsharply: "But that's not the point! Don't you understand, they've found out! Uptown those people know!"Mr. Mapleson was still staring at him as if bemused."Found out—they?" he faltered. "Why do you think so?" Then as Varick sternly gazed at him Mr. Mapleson put out an appealing hand."Please!" he said, and smiled wearily. "I am very tired and I cannot think. For her sake be a little kind. Won't you tell me now how you know?"So Varick told him. The card David Lloyd had left could have had but one significance. David knew something. For that, for no other reason, would he have come there to Mrs. Tilney's. He had meant to ask Varick what he knew.A sigh, a deep breath, escaped Mr. Mapleson."No, you are wrong," he said heavily. "I know why he came. She brought him here with her.""Bab brought him!" repeated Varick, wondering.Mr. Mapleson nodded slowly. She had brought David to see him, but the significance of this Varick could not see. It merely struck him as odd, yet why odd he could not have told. After all whyshouldn't she? She knew nothing of the fraud. With equal propriety she might have brought any of her supposed relatives to see the little man."What are you going to do?" asked Mr. Mapleson.He was gazing at Varick, his air intent. Again Varick looked at him with wonder."Do?" he repeated.What was there to do? To him at any rate it was evident that those people either knew or suspected, so what could he do but wait? Bab could not be saved. He had tried and failed."You mean you'll do nothing?" persisted Mr. Mapleson. Once more his voice rose shrilly. "But you must!" he cried, adding: "It was for you I did what I did—because of you, Mr. Varick! I felt you cared for her; I thought you would be up there with her watching out for her! I told myself that with you near her I need have no fear! What is it now? Don't you love her? Are you going to stand by idle and let whatever happens happen? I cannot believe it, Mr. Varick!"Varick waited until the outburst was at an end."I can do nothing," he said. "After what thatman Beeston's done to me you know I can't go into that house! Besides that, you know I asked her to marry me, and you heard what she answered. When she comes back here I'll ask her again. That won't be long, I'm certain!"Mr. Mapleson fairly bubbled over."Till she comes back!" he shrilled. "Till she comes back! I tell you she'll never come back. Don't you understand?"Varick heard in sudden wonder. Before he could speak, though, Mr. Mapleson's voice rose to a shriller, keener pitch."I say she'll never come back! You've let her stay up there alone, never going near her, and now that fellow Lloyd wants her. That's why she brought him here—it was for me to see him. She'll marry him before you know it!" Then with a gesture of irrepressible misery and despair Mr. Mapleson seized him by the arm. "What are you going to do?" he demanded."I don't know," said Varick, "but I'll tell you this. If anything happens I'll be there with her!"

And there you are! Forger and fraud, jailbird too—all these, as Varick charged, Mr. Mapleson had been. Bab, indeed, was no more old Peter Beeston's grandchild than was the little man himself.

That night the dinner hour came and went disregarded; time sped and midnight drew near before the colloquy in Mrs. Tilney's top-floor back had ended. Mr. Mapleson admitted everything, bit by bit laying bare the whole of that tragic farce, the story of his past. And what a tale it was! Grotesque you'd call it, an outlandish, ludicrous affair, and yet of a pathos, banal as it was, one could not mistake. For Mr. Mapleson was not by nature in any way a criminal. Neither had he become a jailbird in seeking to serve his own ends. That was his story. Not once but twice the little man had become a forger, and each time he had forged only to help others. It had never been for himself.

"You mean you got nothing!" questioned Varick.

"I!" cried Mapleson. His tone was not only surprised, it was resentful. "Certainly not!" he said.

"Good Lord!" Varick murmured.

Absurd as it was, though, Varick could not overlook or disregard the fact that what Mr. Mapleson had done had its sinister side. Not above a week had passed when out of a clear sky the first bolt descended. Fraud and forgery, sad to say, seldom lack effect.

At one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon—it was the first half-holiday in April—Varick slammed shut the covers of the ledger he was working on and, his task finished for the day, donned his hat and hurried out into Broad Street. The day was glorious. A mild breeze was stirring, while from overhead, pouring down between the cañon-like walls of the skyscrapers, a burst of sunshine filled all the neighborhood with light. Its radiance contrasted vividly with the lower city's usual dingy dimness, though Varick gave little heed to that. He bustled onward, his face grim. Even when across the street a man stepped out from a doorway and followedhim, matching his step to Varick's, he gave it scant attention. To be watched, to be followed, was not any novelty now. It neither worried him nor made him wonder why he was the subject of that espionage. The night before, shoved under his door at Mrs. Tilney's, he had found the card of no less a person than his one-time friend, David Lloyd. "I'd like to see you," was penciled on the back. But until that morning, some time after he had reached the bank, the full significance of the card and its message had not dawned on him.

Why did David Lloyd wish to see him? It was a year since the two had last met, and the friendship that Varick himself had at that time broken up he meant David to see never would be renewed. No Beeston, nor any kin of Beeston, should be a friend of his. He would arrange for that. Blunt, brusque, in fact, he had said good-by, then turned abruptly on his heel, leaving David Lloyd staring after him. This, however, was not the point. Though Varick often had regretted that day's harshness, he had still made no overtures. Neither by word nor by sign had he given the least hint that he wished to end the feud.

So what was the meaning of that card? What was it David Lloyd wished of him? It was not until nearly noon that a thought came to him. Then with a staggering certitude the suspicion flashed into his mind. Mr. Mapleson! Had the Lloyds heard something? Was the fraud already known? As murder will out, so, too, would a thing like that cry itself from the housetops.

"My soul!" said Varick to himself. "If they should know!"

That was why he had hurried homeward—to find out if they had. All the way uptown in the crawling L road train he sat mulling over in his mind the tale he had dragged piecemeal out of Mr. Mapleson. Across the aisle a pair of girls, office workers evidently, gave him an appraising look, frankly appreciative; then they began to giggle and whisper together, their eyes stealing consciously toward him. But Varick did not heed.

It was a queer tale—that story he had heard from Mr. Mapleson. He hailed, it appeared, from a town in western New York—Buckland, a village near Rochester. Here the little man had come of sound stock, a line of God-fearing, sturdy men, of thrifty,virtuous women. Of the man's family, however, only one besides himself survived. This was a married sister, and to her Mr. Mapleson owed the first of his two forgeries, a crime that had sent him to state's prison, and that he had committed to save her from dishonor and her husband from disgrace.

The sister's husband, it appeared, was a politician. He was, furthermore, like many of his ilk, smug, self-satisfied, selfish and dishonest. One might guess offhand his part in the tale. Some countyroad funds having fallen into his hands, the fellow had appropriated them, and then, unable to repay and in imminent peril of exposure, he had appealed in terror to his wife. She, in turn, appealed with a like terror to her brother.

One may picture the little man's trembling horror. One may picture, too, his shame. To clear the politician, however, fifteen hundred dollars must be had forthwith; and not having that much, Mr. Mapleson had obtained the amount in the only way he knew how—by forgery. He endorsed a check, the property of his employer. And the employer had been Beeston!

It was there, in fact, working in Beeston's officeas a clerk, that Mr. Mapleson had obtained the information he later put to use in his second forgery. He knew Beeston's son—Randolph Beeston that was. He had known, too, of the man's surreptitious marriage.

At the time of his first offense he had salved his conscience with the usual sophistries. It was a loan, he had whispered to himself. It would be returned at once. He had indeed paid back all but a few dollars when an accident exposed him. No excuse availed then; and the joke of it, too, was that when once his disgrace became public the politician, with characteristic effrontery, publicly disowned him! Thus broken, beaten, outraged, he had served a five-years' penalty; and emerging from jail, he had renounced not only his family but all else that connected him with the unhappy past. The day he had come forth from Sing Sing was, in fact, the day he first had shown himself at Mrs. Tilney's. And then?

There were those first years of Mr. Mapleson's stay in the boarding house. There was the coming, too, of that unknown woman—the widowed girl mother and her child; then the mother's death.Lonely and shy, a man at heart as tender as a woman, the child thus brought to Mr. Mapleson had given him all the love and tenderness that life theretofore seemed to have denied him. And comforted by it, with all that child's affection to cheer him, to heal the hurt he had felt, Mr. Mapleson had sought in every way to repay Bab for all she had been to him. The forgery, his second effort, was a guaranty of this.

"Diamonds and pearls!" That had been his promise. However, it was not merely to get these that the fraud had been committed. Bab's interest in Varick, the newcomer at Mrs. Tilney's, Mr. Mapleson had been quick to see. Beeston beginning then to advertise for news of his long-lost son, the little man had grasped at the chance of a desperate coup. Bab's people he had not found. What is more, he knew he never would. The story the mother herself had suggested—that she was a widow, that she had come to New York to earn a living, that neither she nor her husband had any kin left living—all this, Mr. Mapleson had assured himself, must be true. His fraud, therefore, had been deliberate. How in his cracked wits, though, he hoped to succeed withit, who knows or who can tell? It is enough that he not only had tricked the Beeston lawyers but, shrewd as Mrs. Tilney was, had managed to cozen her as well. And Bab had been entrenched in the Beeston household as firmly, it seemed, as if she had been born there.

But now—— Across the car aisle the two girls giggling and whispering there paused to nudge each other as Varick abruptly arose. Little wonder too! As the guard called his station and he wandered toward the door he had wrung his brows into a scowl, a frown of gathering disquiet. Why had that card been put beneath his door? What was it the Beestons knew? Had they so soon discovered the fraud, or was the message no more than a coincidence? It seemed to Varick inconceivable that David Lloyd should have sought him for any but the one reason. And yet why him? That in itself was startling. Why apply to him? Why not apply to the man responsible? Why?

With a swift look, turning as he left the car, Varick glanced behind him. Yes, he still was followed! That man, his shadow, still was there! He sped on toward Mrs. Tilney's, and, racing up the steps, waspanting softly as he shut the street door behind him.

Why were they following him? Why had David Lloyd come to Mrs. Tilney's? More than that, if they knew, what was to happen to Bab? A moment later Varick rapped at Mr. Mapleson's door.

The Pine Street real-estate office that employed Mr. Mapleson at twenty-eight dollars a week, and long had thought these wages high, still further added to a reputation for free-handed generosity by making each Saturday in the spring and summer a half-holiday for their employees. These for years had been the joy of the little man's life. Swiftly he would put his desk in order, breathe a timid good-day to his fellow-clerks, then speed on his way uptown. There Bab would be waiting him.

The years had made little change. She had always been there—in the beginning as the Bab that Mr. Mapy had first known, the child in pigtails and pinafores, hanging over the gate and waving wildly when she saw him coming; then as a little bigger, a little older Bab, a stilty-legged young one who came running up the street to meet him. As soon as Mr. Mapleson had bolted luncheon, gobbling in his haste,he and Bab would sally forth, the man almost as eager as the child, bound together for an afternoon in the Park. Pennies in those days were scarce with the little man, but somehow he still managed to find enough for a voyage in the swan boats, a trip or two in the goat wagons, a mad whirl on the merry-go-round. "Who's got the brass ring? Ride again!" The first time Bab, by skill of arms, speared the treasured prize, Mr. Mapy was nearly beside himself with excitement.

"Who's got the brass ring? Why, she has!" he cried indignantly when the master of ceremonies monotonously chanted his cry. "My little girl's got it, of course!" snorted Mr. Mapy.

But time flies. There came a year when the carrousel even, with its gilded, splendid steeds, its giraffes, its stages, its flying dragons, gave way to other charms, more sedate, older, more grown up. On Saturdays then, Bab and Mr. Mapy wandered elsewhere, Bab now a slender, slim thing with dresses let down to her boot tops. It was to picture galleries and places like that, theaters too, that they now went, to see a good play that Mr. Mapy beforehand had made sure was good. For the littleman, peculiar as he might be, in one respect had no delusions. Whether or not Bab fell heir to her diamonds and pearls, Mr. Mapleson meant her to grow up into a clean-minded, healthy-headed woman—the kind that looks you quietly in the face, clean, unafraid, as clear-eyed as Diana. She should be good, whatever else, vowed Mr. Mapy; and though the term be homely, as homely as his ambition, there is somehow about it a nobility at which even the most cynical of us may not sneer.Ave, John Mapleson!Salutamus!

What times the two had then! "Hah! th' play's the thing!" he'd cry, stirred, his face alight at some rousing scene that had depicted virtue victorious and villainy put to rout. "Hah, I told you so!" It made Bab smile to see him. On the other hand, if on the stage things went wrong with some poor girl or some noble fellow was in jeopardy, Mr. Mapy would sit almost breathless, silenced, waiting until all was well. Bab more than once had seen the tears steal down the little man's gray face. However, once the suspense had passed, once all was as it should be, Mr. Mapy, his spirits rising at a bound, would bubble with animation. "Great! Wasn't itgreat! Was ever anything so fine!" For a week he and Bab would talk it over, discussing every scene; then the Saturday half-holiday would come again, and there would be another matinée.

Little wonder Mr. Mapy so eagerly waited from week to week. It was his joy. It was the one great, true pleasure of that marred, broken life of his. And when heads began to turn, eyes to glance, lighting with admiration at the slim, tender girl, the young woman now, who went with him on these Saturdays, little Mr. Mapleson's heart fairly bounded, swelling with pride, with loving satisfaction.

Of all the days that's in the weekI dearly love but one day——

If he who wrote that ballad had only made it Saturday!

So thought John Mapleson at any rate. So, too, in the passage of all those years, never once had he let anything stand in the way of that holiday. There was Bab, hanging over the gate, waiting in her pigtails to wave to him. Then there was the stilty-legged little Bab riding the gilded carrousel, scream-ingwith delight when she speared the treasured brass ring. And then, finally, there was Bab the blue-eyed and slender, the white-faced little old man's charming companion—the Bab whom people, smiling in admiration, turned their heads to see. All these, Mr. Mapy! Yes, but where was Bab now? It was a Saturday, yet she was not with him. He wondered with a rising terror what had happened. Where was she? What had befallen her?

He was still sitting there, his chin fallen on his breast, when he heard Varick's step upon the stair. A moment later there came his knock. With trembling knees the little man arose, and shambling across the room, he unlocked and opened the door.

"Well?" he asked monotonously.

In the week, the few days that had intervened since the night when he had dragged out of Mr. Mapleson his story, Varick's anger at the little man had drained itself away. For what good now could anger do? After all, too, if it were indeed forgery that Mr. Mapleson had set his hand to, there was no meanness in that fraud. It was merely the impulse of an unbalanced mind. Varick, after he had closed the door behind him, walked quietly across the room.Mr. Mapleson at his approach turned to him, trembling.

"What do you want?" he asked. "I have told you everything, haven't I?"

"Listen to me," said Varick. "There was a man here yesterday to see me, and I want to know why. You're not hiding anything, are you? Have these people uptown found out?"

"Found out?" repeated Mr. Mapleson. He gazed at Varick, his face dull, uncomprehending. "What do you mean?'

"Let me tell you something," said Varick, and he laid a hand on Mr. Mapleson's shoulder. "I see you don't know, but for ten days I have been followed—I, you understand! I have not told you before because I was not certain. Now I know. For ten days two men have been watching me!"

"Watching you?" echoed Mr. Mapleson. It was evident he still did not grasp what the fact conveyed. "Why should they watch you?" he faltered. "Why are they not watching me?"

Varick shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

"They probably are," he answered; "probably they are following all of us!" Then he addedsharply: "But that's not the point! Don't you understand, they've found out! Uptown those people know!"

Mr. Mapleson was still staring at him as if bemused.

"Found out—they?" he faltered. "Why do you think so?" Then as Varick sternly gazed at him Mr. Mapleson put out an appealing hand.

"Please!" he said, and smiled wearily. "I am very tired and I cannot think. For her sake be a little kind. Won't you tell me now how you know?"

So Varick told him. The card David Lloyd had left could have had but one significance. David knew something. For that, for no other reason, would he have come there to Mrs. Tilney's. He had meant to ask Varick what he knew.

A sigh, a deep breath, escaped Mr. Mapleson.

"No, you are wrong," he said heavily. "I know why he came. She brought him here with her."

"Bab brought him!" repeated Varick, wondering.

Mr. Mapleson nodded slowly. She had brought David to see him, but the significance of this Varick could not see. It merely struck him as odd, yet why odd he could not have told. After all whyshouldn't she? She knew nothing of the fraud. With equal propriety she might have brought any of her supposed relatives to see the little man.

"What are you going to do?" asked Mr. Mapleson.

He was gazing at Varick, his air intent. Again Varick looked at him with wonder.

"Do?" he repeated.

What was there to do? To him at any rate it was evident that those people either knew or suspected, so what could he do but wait? Bab could not be saved. He had tried and failed.

"You mean you'll do nothing?" persisted Mr. Mapleson. Once more his voice rose shrilly. "But you must!" he cried, adding: "It was for you I did what I did—because of you, Mr. Varick! I felt you cared for her; I thought you would be up there with her watching out for her! I told myself that with you near her I need have no fear! What is it now? Don't you love her? Are you going to stand by idle and let whatever happens happen? I cannot believe it, Mr. Varick!"

Varick waited until the outburst was at an end.

"I can do nothing," he said. "After what thatman Beeston's done to me you know I can't go into that house! Besides that, you know I asked her to marry me, and you heard what she answered. When she comes back here I'll ask her again. That won't be long, I'm certain!"

Mr. Mapleson fairly bubbled over.

"Till she comes back!" he shrilled. "Till she comes back! I tell you she'll never come back. Don't you understand?"

Varick heard in sudden wonder. Before he could speak, though, Mr. Mapleson's voice rose to a shriller, keener pitch.

"I say she'll never come back! You've let her stay up there alone, never going near her, and now that fellow Lloyd wants her. That's why she brought him here—it was for me to see him. She'll marry him before you know it!" Then with a gesture of irrepressible misery and despair Mr. Mapleson seized him by the arm. "What are you going to do?" he demanded.

"I don't know," said Varick, "but I'll tell you this. If anything happens I'll be there with her!"

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