No; there was but one thing to do: parry his
threat of confessing to Dr. Lavendar that he had "made a mistake" in
advising that David should be given to her, by a confession of her
own, a confession which should admit the doctor's change of mind
without mentioning its cause, and at the same time hold such promises
for the future that the old minister would say that she might have
David. Then she could turn upon her enemy with the triumphant
declaration that she had forestalled him; that she had said exactly
what he had threatened to say,--no more, no less. And yet the child
was hers! But as she tried to plan how she should put it, the idea
eluded her. She would tell Dr. Lavendar thus and so: but even as she
marshalled her words, that scene in the waiting-room of the railroad
station ached in her imagination. Alice's ignorance of her existence
became an insult; what she was going to say to Dr. Lavendar turned
into a denunciation of Lloyd Pryor; he was vile, and cruel, and
contemptible! But these words stumbled, too. Back in her mind, common
sense agreed to Lloyd's silence to his daughter; and, suddenly, to her
amazement, she knew that she agreed, not only to the silence, but to
his objection to marrying her. It would be an offence for her to live
with Alice! Marriage, which would have quitted this new tormenting
sense of responsibility and made her like other people, would not have
lessened that offence.
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