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your own with this scene. I am of the opinion that the position in which I found you allows me no other course than to be finished with you. Any woman in Christendom would say the same.”
    “It is a sad reflection on Christendom to take this high-handed tone with me. I found you in a very similar position with Mr. Seville at an inn in Reading not so very long ago, and didn’t feel it necessary to raise a fuss about it.”
    “You found me having a cup of tea with Mr. Seville, who was kind enough to help me when Mama took ill. She was lying in the next room, and you did make a considerable fuss. You threatened to shoot him.”
    “I should have! To be in your bedroom at midnight.”
    “We were both fully dressed, at least. The circumstances were entirely different.”
    “No, they were very much the same. Seville helped you when you were in trouble, and it chanced he ended up in your room at an unseemly hour. I helped Cybele when she was in trouble, with the same result. Also with the same result in both cases of my ending up in the wrong, being kicked out as though I were a mutt.”
    “You are no better than a mutt!”
    His body tensed, and a cold anger shook him. “You were happy enough to make use of the mutt, however. To use my connections and influence to ingratiate yourself with society, and get your books reviewed in Blackwood’s Review. To make an advantageous marriage. What changed your mind, as you apparently recognized me for a cur from the beginning?”
    “I thought you had changed, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, after all.”
    “You taught me a few, Prudence. I thought you were different from other girls, immeasurably better. I thought we had a relationship of mutual trust and respect and understanding.”
    “I can’t respect a man who doesn’t respect himself. To invite that trollop into your house, and us on the very edge of being married.”
    “She’s gone. I took her away.”
    “Back to the love nest, Dammler? Swallow Street, was it not, where all the ladybirds roost?”
    “No, she’s gone to stay with some friend on the corner of Conduit and Bond.”
    “That would be handy for you, with your own new house in Berkeley Square within whistling distance. Chosen with that convenience in mind, no doubt.”
    “I didn’t choose the apartment. Wills arranged it. She’s got a job with him in the play.”
    “Better and better! An unexceptionable excuse to see her every day. That will give society a good laugh, to see your mistress starring in your new play, while the bride sits home, ignorant of the fact.”
    “She isn’t starring, and you are not ignorant of the fact that she has a small part, as I just told you.”
    “I am not going to be the bride, either, so it’s no matter.”
    “I won’t be back, Prudence,” he said, studying her with a carefully controlled expression. “If you send me away now, I won’t ever be back. Even a mutt will grovel only so far.”
    “I’m glad to hear it. Pray don’t slam the door when you go out.”
    “This is the end then.”
    “The end, finis, curtain. Make a nice bow.”
    He made no bow, but turned and walked briskly out the door, giving it a good slam behind him.
    She was half glad it was irrevocably over and done with, and wholly sorry that it had ended this way. Her next step was to reconsider their argument, and find an insult in every word he had uttered. To imply she had used him to advance herself was unforgivable. He had arranged the interview that got her books reviewed in Blackwood’s Review, but she had not egged him on to it, had been ignorant of his part in it until it was all over. The rest of it was pure fabrication. She had not wanted to travel in his set, he had dragged her into it. As to dredging up the Seville business again! A wealthy gentleman who had asked her to marry him, and later, after she had refused him, had accidentally been staying at the same inn in Reading, and got her a doctor when Mama was poisoned