“Well?” demanded Mary.
Loveman answered slowly. “There’s a rumor about that Jack’s his old self once more; that secretly he’s been in New York all the while, and that Broadway’s got him again.”
“I don’t believe it!” cried Mary in a low voice.
“And I do,” Loveman said solemnly—“though I have no proof.”
Clifford could see that Mary, gazing across at the little lawyer, had turned very white. For all her confident exterior, he guessed she now feared that Jack had done just what Loveman had said.
“Well?” she challenged.
“If Jack has,—and I’m sure he has,—isn’t it perfectly plain that you can never make a responsible man of him? And if you can’t make a man of him, it’s perfectly plain that you can never put your plan across.”
“Well?” repeated Mary.
Loveman leaned farther over the table and spoke in a low voice—though Clifford got his every word. “Drop the game, Mary. It’s a dead one. There’s not one penny for you, or any one else, in trying to play it further. Drop it, and come in on the basis I spoke of a week or so ago.”
Mary’s face gave no sign of what she might be thinking. “Just what was that—if you don’t mind outlining it again?”