"What do you want with her?"
"I want a sitting at once!"
"You keep away from her!" Victor blazed out. "I don't want her sitting for you. She's mixed up too deeply in your affairs already. Carew said—"
"I don't care what Carew said—and I don't care whether you approve of your mother's sitting for me or not. Her controls will decide that question."
He tramped out and down the stairway, and from the window Victor saw him whirl away in his automobile. "That man's a scoundrel and a slob," he said; "a greasy old slob. I will not have my mother sitting for such people. Can't I head him off somehow?"
With sudden resolution he ran down the stairway and over to the telephone booth on the corner. He got the butler at once, and was deeply relieved to find that his mother was out with Mrs. Joyce. "He can't see her before I do," he concluded, as he hung up the receiver. "I'll go over there and wait for her to return."
As he neared the house he met Leo coming out with some letters in her hand, and with the swift resiliency of youth, he asked if he might not walk with her.
"Certainly," she said; "I want to talk with you about your plans."
"I haven't any plans," he said.
"What have you been doing this morning?"