"There are a number of things I might do—to one who is so temptingly vulnerable as you are, Bertie. For one, I might send a wire to the sheriff of the home county, or to the warden of the penitentiary. Really, when I come to think of it, I'm not sure that I oughtn't to do it, anyway, on the score of public morals. Nobody would blame me; and some few would applaud."
"Morals!" I exploded. "You don't know the meaning of the word!"
"Maybe not," she rejoined lightly. "Not many women do. But sending the wire would be a rather crude way of bringing you to terms; especially since I know of at least one better way. I'm going to hazard a guess. You haven't told the Cripple Creek girl anything about your past?"
I was silent.
"I thought not," she went on smoothly. "With some women, perhaps with most women, it wouldn't make any great difference, one way or the other. So far as anybody out here knows to the contrary, you are a free man—and a rich one; and so long as you haven't committed bigamy or something of that sort, the average girl wouldn't care the snap of her finger. Up to a few days ago I thought the brown-eyed little thing you brought up here one night last fall to the theater was the average girl. But now I know better."
It had always seemed a sheer sacrilege to even mention Mary Everton in Agatha Geddis's presence. But this time I broke over.
"You know who she is?" I queried.
"I do now. And I know her métier even better than you do, Bertie, dear. She might go to her grave loving you to distraction, but she would never have an ex-convict for the father of her children—not if she knew it. It's in the Everton blood. Anybody who knew Phineas Everton as you and I did in the old school-days, ought to know exactly what to expect of his daughter."
I sat up quickly, and the lights in the high-swung drawing-room chandelier began to turn red for me.
"You devil! Do you mean to say that you would tell Polly Everton?" I burst out savagely.