Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/342

328 seen that right off." He paused as if to meditate profoundly.

"If you was to ask me, though, I'd say she had him—just like that!"

He held an open hand toward me, then tightly clenched it.

Suspecting he might spread absurd gossip of this sort, I explained carefully to him that his lordship had indeed at once perceived her to be a dangerous woman; and that he was now taking his own cunning way to break off the distressing affair between her and his brother. He listened patiently, but seemed wedded to some monstrous view of his own.

"Them dames of that there North Side set better watch out," he remarked ominously. "First thing they know, what that Kate Kenner 'll hand them—they can make a lemonade out of!"

I could make but little of this, save its general import, which was of course quite shockingly preposterous. I found myself wishing, to be sure, that his lordship had been able to accomplish his mission to North America without appearing to meet the person as a social equal, as I feared indeed that a wrong impression of his attitude would be gained by the undiscerning public. It might have been better, I was almost quite certain, had he adopted a stern and even brutal method at the outset, instead of the circuitous and diplomatic. Belknap-Jackson shared this view with me.

"I should hate dreadfully to have his lordship's reputation suffer for this," he confided to me.

The first week dragged to its close in this regrettable