"Secrecy wouldn't do," he said, "To get married, and not tell, is only whipping Satan round the stump as far as Alice is concerned.

Ultimately it would make double explanations. The marriage would come out, somehow, and then the very natural question would be: 'Why the devil were they married secretly?' No; you can't keep those things hidden. And as for Alice, if she didn't think anything else, she'd think I had fibbed to her. And that would nearly kill her; she has a perfect mania about truth! You see, it leads up to the same thing: Alice's discovery that I have been--like most men. No; if it's got to be, it shall be open and aboveboard."

She gasped with relief; his look of cold annoyance meant, just for the moment, nothing at all.

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 d.a.m.ned 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 grat.i.tude, 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?"

She sat looking at him, blankly, "Not take David! Why, you surely didn't think that I would give up David?"

"My dear," said Lloyd Pryor, "you will either give him up, or you will give me up."

"And you don't care which!" she burst out pa.s.sionately.

He gave her a deadly look. "I do care which."

And at that she blenched but clung doggedly to his promise. "You must marry me!"

"There is no _must_ about it. I will. I have told you so. But _I_ did not suppose it was necessary to make your giving up David a condition.

Not that I mean to turn the young man out, I'm sure. Only, I decline to take him in. But, good Heavens, Helena," he added, in perfectly genuine astonishment, "it isn't possible that you seriously contemplated keeping him? Will you please consider the effect upon the domestic circle of a very natural reference on his part, to your _brother?_ You might as well take your servants along with you--or your Old Chester doctor! Really, my dear Nelly," he ended banteringly, "I should have supposed that even you would have had more sense."

Helena grew slowly very white. She felt as if caught in a trap; and yet the amused surprise in Lloyd Pryor's face was honest enough, and perfectly friendly. "I cannot leave David here," she said faintly. And as terror and despair and dumb determination began to look out of her eyes, the man beside her grew gayly sympathetic.

"I perfectly understand how you feel, He is a nice little chap. But, of course, you see it would be impossible?"

"I can't give him up."

"I wouldn't," he said amiably. "You can go away from Old Chester--of course you must do that--and take him with you. And I will come and see you as often as I can."

He breathed more freely than he had for weeks; more freely than since the receipt of that brief despatch:--"F. is dead," and the initials H.

R. So far from having used a sling and a smooth stone from the brook, the boy had been a veritable armor-bearer to the giant! Well; poor Nelly! From her point of view, it was of course a great disappointment. He hated to have her unhappy; he hated to see suffering; he wished they could get through this confounded interview.

His sidewise, uneasy glance at her tense figure, betrayed his discomfort at the sight of pain. What a pity she had aged so, and that her hands had grown so thin. But she had her old charm yet; certainly she was still an exquisite creature in some ways--and she had not grown too fat. He had been afraid once that she would get fat. How white her neck was; it was like swan's-down where the lace fell open in the front of her dress. For a moment he forgot his prudent resolutions; he put his arm around her and bent his head to touch her throat with his lips.

But she pushed him away with a flaming look. "David saves you, does he? Well; he will save me!"

Without another word she left him, as she had left him once before, alone in the long parlor with the faintly snapping fire, and the darkness pressing against the uncurtained windows. This time he did not follow her to plead outside her closed door. There was a moment's hesitation, then he shook his head, and took a fresh cigar.

"No," he said, "it's better this way."

CHAPTER XXVIII

"If it was _me_ that was doin' it," said Sarah, "I'd send for the doctor."

"Well, but," Maggie protested, "she might be mad."

"If it was me, I'd let her be mad."

"Well, then, why don't you?" Maggie retorted.

"Send for him?" Sarah said airily impersonal. "Oh, it's none of my business."

"Did you even it to her?" Maggie asked in a worried way.

"I did. I says, 'You're sick, Mrs. Richie,' I says.--She looked like she was dead--'Won't I tell George to run down and ask Dr. King to come up?' I says." "An" what did she say?" Maggie asked absently. She knew what Mrs. Richie had said, because this was the fourth time she and Sarah had gone over it.

"'No,' she says, 'I don't want the doctor. There's nothing the matter.' And she like death! An' I says, 'Will you see Mr. Pryor, ma'am, before he goes?' And she says, 'No,' she says; 'tell Mr. Pryor that I ain't feelin' very well.' An' I closed the shutters again, an'

come down-stairs. But if it was me, I'd send for Dr. King. If she ain't well enough to see her own brother--and him just as kind!"-- Sarah put her hand into the bosom of her dress for a dollar bill-- "Look at that! And you had one, too, though he's hardly ever set eyes on you, If she ain't well enough to see him, she's pretty sick."

"Well," said Maggie, angrily, "I guess I earned my dollar as much as you. Where would his dinner be without me? That's always the way. The cook ain't seen, so she gets left out."

"You ain't got left out this time, anyhow. He's a kind man; I've always said so. And she said she wasn't well enough to see him! Well; if it was me's I'd send for Dr. King."

So the two women wrangled, each fearful of responsibility; until at last, after Maggie had twice gone up-stairs and listened at that silent door, they made up their minds.

"David," Maggie said, "you go and wait at the gate, and when the butcher's cart comes along, you tell him you want on. An' you go down street, an' tell him you want off at Dr. King's. An' you ask Dr. King to come right along up here. Tell him Mrs. Richie's real sick."

"If it was me, I'd let him wait till he goes to school," Sarah began to hesitate; "she'll be mad."

But Maggie had started in and meant to see the matter through: "Let her be mad!"

"Well, it's not my doin'," Sarah said with a fine carelessness, and crept up-stairs to listen again at Mrs. Richie's door. "Seemed like as if she was sort of--_cryin_'!" she told Maggie in an awed whisper when she came down.

David brought his message to the doctor's belated breakfast table.

William had been up nearly all night with a very sick patient, and Martha had been careful not to wake him in the morning. He pushed his plate back, as David repeated Maggie's words, and looked blankly at the table-cloth.

"She's never really got over the shock about Sam Wright's Sam, has she?" Martha said. "Sometimes I almost think she was--" Mrs. King's expressive pantomime of eyebrows and lips meant "in love with him"-- words not to be spoken before a child.

"Nonsense!" said William King curtly. "No; I don't want any more breakfast, thank you, my dear. I'll go and hitch up."