Nor did this draw any criticism of approval or the reverse.

“I couldn’t let him hypnotize that little girl from the country, could I?” he asked.

“I suppose not.”  Her whole face began to bubble with laughter in the way he liked so well.  “But you’ll be a busy knight errant if you undertake to right the wrongs of every girl you meet in New York.”  A dimple flashed near the corner of her mouth.  “Of course she’s pretty.”

“Well, yes.  She is right pretty.”

“Describe her to me.”

He made a lame attempt.  Out of his tangled sentences she picked on some fragments. “. . . blooms like a cherokee rose . . . soft like a kitten.”

“I’m glad she’s so charming.  That excuses any indiscretion,” the girl said with a gleam of friendly malice.  “There’s no fun in rescuing the plain ones, is there?”

“They don’t most usually need so much rescuin’,” Clay admitted.

“Don’t you think it possible that you rescued her out of a job?”

The young man nodded his head ruefully.  “That’s exactly what I did.  After all her trouble gettin’ one I’ve thrown her out again.  I’m a sure-enough fathead.”

“You’ve been down to find out?” she asked with a sidelong tilt of her quick eyes.

“Yes.  I went down this mawnin’ with Tim Muldoon.  He’s a policeman I met down there.  Miss Kitty hasn’t been seen since that night.  We went out to the Pirate’s Den, the Purple Pup, Grace Godwin’s Garret, and all the places where she used to sell cigarettes.  None of them have seen anything of her.”

“So that really your championship hasn’t been so great a help to her after all, has it?”

“No.”

“And I suppose it ruined the business of the man that owns the Sea Siren.”

“I don’t reckon so.  I’ve settled for the furniture.  And Muldoon says when it gets goin’ again the Sea Siren will do a big business on account of the fracas.  It’s Kitty I’m worried about.”

“She’s a kind of cuddly little girl who needs the protection of some nice man, you say?”

“That’s right.”

The eyes of Miss Whitford were unfathomable.  “Fluffy and—­kind of helpless.”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t worry about her if I were you.  She’ll land on her feet,” the girl said lightly.

Her voice had not lost its sweet cadences, but Clay sensed in it something that was almost a touch of cool contempt.  He felt vaguely that he must have blundered in describing Kitty.  Evidently Miss Whitford did not see her quite as she was.

The young woman pressed the starter button.  “We must be going home.  I have an engagement to go riding with Mr. Bromfield.”

The man beside the girl kept his smile working and concealed the little stab of jealousy that dirked him.  Colin Whitford had confided to Lindsay that his daughter was practically engaged to Clarendon Bromfield and that he did not like the man.  The range-rider did not like him either, but he tried loyally to kill his distrust of the clubman.  If Beatrice loved him there must be good in the fellow.  Clay meant to be a good loser anyhow.