Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/274

264 she has compromised herself, by spending the night here. Convention has been disregarded. A ripping good chance, I call it. You tell me she wouldn't accept benefits, and you want to help her. If she's the kind I believe her to be, even if she refuses you she will not be angry. You never can tell what woman will or won't do."

An old and forgotten bit of mental machinery began to set up a clitter-clatter in Cutty's brain. Marry Kitty? Make a settlement, and then give her her freedom? Rot! Girls of Kitty's calibre were above such expediencies. He tried to resurrect his interest in the drums of jeopardy, which he might now appropriate without having to shanghai his conscience. The clitter-clatter smothered it; indeed, this new racket upset and demoralized the well-ordered machinery of his thinking apparatus as applied daily. Marry Kitty!

"I'm old enough to be her father."

"What's that to do with it so long as convention is satisfied?"

Cutty was so shaken and confused that he missed the tragic irony of the voice. All the receptive avenues to his brain seemed to have shut down suddenly. He was conscious only of the clitter-clatter. Marry Kitty!

"You can't settle money on her," went on Hawksley, "without scandal. You can't offer her anything without offending her. And you can't let