“Why don’t you marry her, Carter?” was the cool response. “You’re a widower, and she is twice a widow. Why don’t you marry her? You seem to be mightily stuck on her.”
“I am, in the sense that I thoroughly respect a good woman, Jimmy, and Nan is that.”
“She was good enough to go to you and give things away up here, when she supposed that she had the kibosh on me,” sneered Jimmy.
“She did not come to me and give you away, Jimmy. I met her by accident; and even then it was after you had broken your solemn word given to her that night. What has changed you so, Jimmy? You used to be a man of your word, even though you were a crook.”
“I’m not Jimmy, I tell you. Jimmy is dead. Nothing of him remains—unless it is that ghost we have been talking about. Come, Carter, take these irons off me. You can only make trouble for Nan, if I am found in this predicament. She would be the one to suffer; not I.”
“You think so.”
“I know so, Carter. I know whereof I speak. I don’t do things halfway, and you know I do not. I intend to carry off this plan I have laid out, Nick Carter to the contrary, notwithstanding.”
“What does that plan include, Jimmy?”
“If I should tell you, you would know.”
“Do you mean that you would have married that girl, if fortune had not gone against you in the way it has?”