Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/307

Rh would stop at no half measures. I mean to say, she would never think I could bowl her out as easy as buying cockles off a barrow.

At the hour for our conference Belknap-Jackson arrived at my chambers muffled in an ulster and with a soft hat well over his face. I gathered that he had not wished to be observed.

"I feel that this is a crisis," he began as he gloomily shook my hand. "Where is our boasted twentieth-century culture if outrages like this are permitted? For the first time I understand how these Western communities have in the past resorted to mob violence. Public feeling is already running high against the creature and her unspeakable set."

I met this outburst with the serenity of one who holds the winning cards in his hand, and begged him to be seated. Thereupon I disclosed to him the weakly, susceptible nature of the Honourable George, reciting the incidents of the typing-girl and the Brixton milliner. I added that now, as before, I should not hesitate to preserve the family honour.

"A dreadful thing, indeed," he murmured, "if that adventuress should trap him into a marriage. Imagine her one day a Countess of Brinstead! But suppose the fellow prove stubborn; suppose his infatuation dulls all his finer instincts?"

I explained that the Honourable George, while he might upon the spur of the moment commit a folly, was not to be taken too seriously; that he was, I believed, quite incapable of a grand passion. I mean to say, he always forgot them after a few days. More like a child staring into shop-windows he was, rapidly forgetting one desired object in