"I shall tell her that I have met a lady with whom I was in love a long time ago—"
"Was in love? Oh, Lloyd!" she broke in with a cry of pain; at which intrusion of sentimentality Lloyd Pryor said with ferocity: "What's that got to do with it? I'm going to pay the piper! I'll tell Alice that or any other damned thing I please. I'll tell her I'm going to be married in two or three months; I shall go through the form of an engagement. Alice won't like it, of course. No girl likes to have a stepmother; but I shall depend on you, Helena, to make the thing go as well as possible. That's all I have to say."
He set his teeth and turning his back on her, threw his half-smoked cigar into the fire, Helena, cowering on the sofa, murmured something of gratitude, Mr. Pryor did not take the trouble to listen.
"Well," he said, "the next thing is to get you away from this place.
We've got to stage the drama carefully, I can tell you."
"I can go at once."
"Well; you had better go to New York;—what will you do with your youngster?" he interrupted himself. "Leave him on Dr. Lavendar's doorstep, I suppose?"
"My youngster?" she repeated. "Do you mean David?"
Mr. Pryor nodded absently, he was not interested in David.
"Why," Helena said breathlessly, "you didn't suppose I was going to leave David?"
At which, in spite of his preoccupation, Pryor laughed outright. "My dear Helena, even you can hardly be so foolish as to suppose that you could take David with you?"