"Poison your grandfather—I wish I had when he was a boy, and I wouldn't be troubled with you now," was her subtle repartee to this.
"I shall not lower myself to retort that you are old enough to have had your wish"—Prospero uttered this dispassionately and with hardly an alcoholic stumble. There I was anxious to leave them, but the lady chose this opening for peculiarly noisy hysterics. I brought her a glass of water; she knocked it from my hands, smashing the glass to fragments.
"Better let May have it out by herself; it is easiest in the end," muttered Prospero. "Edward, when you learn to know the way of a woman with a man, you will lose all concern. She may do this for hours."
The latter statement caused me to flee. I went to the Otooska House and sought out Knowlton. He listened to my tale of woe with his customary grin. "Don't worry, Teddy," he said when I had finished, "she may prove a Godsend. He'll have something besides himself to think about now."
"But, man alive, they are in my rooms. I can't go on living there with the pair of them on my hands."
"Are you disturbed because of the proprieties?"
"Not entirely," I snapped. "Married or not, I don't care—but one drug fiend plus hysterics and broken crockery is more than I will stand."
"I'll move them in the morning," and that was the best compromise I could get.
Not a sound greeted my return. The lights in the study were out, the bedroom door closed, and all was apparently peace. With many inward maledictions on my companions I went to bed.
The six-o'clock alarm brought me with a start out of a sound sleep. As usual I dashed for a shower in the bathroom, to reach which I had to cross my study. To my consternation I encountered la belle Hélène, in flesh coloured tights and little else, violently exercising in the centre of the room with heavy dumbbells.