"_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?" 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 passionately. 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."