"I've left them. There has been a terrible fuss, and when Miss Lily left to-night, I did too."
"She left her home?"
She nodded.
"It's awful, Willy. I don't know all of it, but they've been having her followed, or her grandfather did. I think there's a man in it. Followed! And her a good girl! Her grandfather's been treating her like a dog for weeks. We all noticed it. And to-night there was a quarrel, with all of them at her like a pack of dogs, and her governess crying in the hall. I just went up and packed my things."
"Where did she go?"
"I don't know. I got her a taxicab, and she only took one bag. I went right off to the housekeeper and told her I wouldn't stay, and they could send my money after me."
"Did you notice the number of the taxicab?"
"I never thought of it."
He saw it all with terrible distinctness, The man was Akers, of course. Then, if she had left her home rather than give him up, she was really in love with him. He had too much common sense to believe for a moment that she had fled to Louis Akers' protection, however. That was the last thing she would do. She would have gone to a hotel, or to the Doyle house.
"She shouldn't have left home, Ellen."
"They drove her out, I tell you," Ellen cried, irritably. "At least that's what it amounted to. There are things no high-minded girl will stand. Can you lend me some money, Willy?"
He felt in his pocket, producing a handful of loose money.
"Of course you can have all I've got," he said. "But you must not go to-night, Miss Ellen. It's too late. I'll give you my room and go in with Dan Boyd."
And he prevailed over her protests, in the end. It was not until he saw her settled there, hiding her sense of strangeness under an impassive mask, that he went downstairs again and took his hat from its hook.
Lily must go back home, he knew. It was unthinkable that she should break with her family, and go to the Doyles. He had too little self-consciousness to question the propriety of his own interference, too much love for her to care whether she resented that interference. And he was filled with a vast anger at Jim Doyle. He saw in all this, somehow, Doyle's work; how it would play into Doyle's plans to have Anthony Cardew's granddaughter a member of his household. He would take her away from there if he had to carry her.