Thinking of that gratitude, the tears dried upon Helena's cheeks, hot
with the firelight and with her thoughts. "Suppose she had lived just
a little longer?--just three years longer? Where would her gratitude
have been then?" Helena's face overflowed with sudden gay malice, but
below the malice was weariness. "You are happy now--aren't you?" Sam
Wright had said.... Why, yes, certainly. Frederick had "repented," as
Dr. King expressed it; she had seen to his "repentance"! That in
itself was something to have lived for--a searing flame of happiness.
Enough one might think to satisfy her--if she could only have
forgotten the baby. At first she had believed that she could forget
him. Lloyd had told her she would. How young she had been at
twenty-one to think that any one could forget! She smiled dryly at her
childish hope and at Lloyd's ignorance; but his tenderness had been so
passionately convincing,--and how good he had been about the baby! He
had let her talk of him all she wanted to. Of course, after a while he
got a little tired of the subject, and naturally. It was Frederick's
baby! And Lloyd hated Frederick as much as she did. How they used to
talk about him in those first days of his "repentance!"... "Have you
heard anything?" "Yes; running down-hill every day." "Is there any
news?" "Yes, he'll drink himself into his grave in six months." Ah,
that was happiness indeed!--"his grave, in six months!"... She
flung herself back in her chair, her hands dropping listlessly into
her lap. "Oh--my little, dead baby!"...
It was nearly midnight; the fire had burned quite out; the room had
fallen into shadows. Oh, yes, as she told Sam Wright, she was happy.
Her face fell into lines of dull indifference.
She got up, wearily, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, as a child
does; then suddenly remembered that she had reached no conclusion
about this little boy Dr. Lavendar was interested in. Suppose she
should get fond of him and want to keep him--how would Lloyd feel
about it? Would he think the child might take her thoughts from him?
But at that she smiled; he could not be so foolish! "I'll write and
ask him, anyhow. Of course, if he objects, I wouldn't dream of it. I
wonder what he will think?"