"I can't do it," he muttered; "it isn't in me to be an out-and-out scoundrel. She is not the girl I want, but I have promised her, and I must stick to it; all the same, I am a ruined man. Oh, if Alison had only been true to me."
"Now, old chap, what are you grumbling to yourself for?" said a voice just behind him.
He turned abruptly and met the keen-eyed, ferret-looking face of the detective Sampson. Sampson and Jim had not been very friendly lately, and Jim wondered now in a vague sort of way why his quondam friend had troubled himself to visit him.
"Sit down, won't you?" he said abruptly. "There's a chair."
"I'll shut the door first," said Sampson. "I have got a thing or two to say to you, and you may as well hear me out. You aint behaved straight to me, Jim; you did a shabby thing behind my back; but, Lor' bless you, ef it's saved me from a gel like Louisa Clay, why, I'll be obleeged to you to the end of my days. Look here, I was very near committing myself with that girl. 'Twasn't that I loved her, but I don't go for to deny that she was good-looking, and she certainly did tickle my fancy considerable, and then when I thought of the tidy bit of silver that she would have from her father, I made up my mind that she would be a good enough match for me; but mind you, I never thought her straight—I never yet was mistook in any character I ever studied carefully. I couldn't follow out my calling if I did, Jim, old chap; and that you know well."
"I don't suppose you could, George," said Jim; "but I think it only fair to tell you before you go a step further, that I am engaged to Louisa, and I can't hear her run down by anyone now. So you may as well know that first as last."
"Engaged or not," said Sampson, with curious emphasis, "you have got to hear a thing or two about Louisa Clay to-night."
"If it is bad, I won't hear it," said Jim, clenching his big hand.
"Then you are a greater fool than I took you for; but, look here, you've got to listen, for it concerns that other girl, the girl you used to be so mad on, Alison Reed."
Jim's hands slowly unclenched. He turned round and fixed his great dark eyes with a kind of hungry passion in them on Sampson's face.