Jimmy sighed.  “I get you.  Life is very complex, isn’t it?”

Lord Wisbeach rose.

“You’d better think it over, son,” he said.  “You aren’t going to get anywhere by acting like a fool.  You can’t stop me going after this stuff, and if you won’t come in and go fifty-fifty, you’ll find yourself left.  I’ll beat you to it.”

He left the room, and Jimmy, lighting a fresh cigarette, addressed himself to the contemplation of this new complication in his affairs.  It was quite true what Gentleman Jack or Joe or whatever the “boys” called him had said.  To denounce him meant denouncing himself.  Jimmy smoked thoughtfully.  Not for the first time he wished that his record during the past few years had been of a snowier character.  He began to appreciate what must have been the feelings of Dr. Jekyll under the handicap of his disreputable second self, Mr. Hyde.

CHAPTER XVI

MRS. PETT TAKES PRECAUTIONS

Mrs. Pett, on leaving the luncheon-table, had returned to the drawing-room to sit beside the sick-settee of her stricken child.  She was troubled about Ogden.  The poor lamb was not at all himself to-day.  A bowl of clear soup, the midday meal prescribed by Doctor Briginshaw, lay untasted at his side.

She crossed the room softly, and placed a cool hand on her son’s aching brow.

“Oh, Gee,” said Ogden wearily.

“Are you feeling a little better, Oggie darling?”

“No,” said Ogden firmly.  “I’m feeling a lot worse.”

“You haven’t drunk your nice soup.”

“Feed it to the cat.”

“Could you eat a nice bowl of bread-and-milk, precious?”

“Have a heart,” replied the sufferer.

Mrs. Pett returned to her seat, sorrowfully.  It struck her as an odd coincidence that the poor child was nearly always like this on the morning after she had been entertaining guests; she put it down to the reaction from the excitement working on a highly-strung temperament.  To his present collapse the brutal behaviour of Jerry Mitchell had, of course, contributed.  Every drop of her maternal blood boiled with rage and horror whenever she permitted herself to contemplate the excesses of the late Jerry.  She had always mistrusted the man.  She had never liked his face—­not merely on aesthetic grounds but because she had seemed to detect in it a lurking savagery.  How right events had proved this instinctive feeling.  Mrs. Pett was not vulgar enough to describe the feeling, even to herself, as a hunch, but a hunch it had been; and, like every one whose hunches have proved correct, she was conscious in the midst of her grief of a certain complacency.  It seemed to her that hers must be an intelligence and insight above the ordinary.

The peace of the early afternoon settled upon the drawing-room.  Mrs. Pett had taken up a book; Ogden, on the settee, breathed stentorously.  Faint snores proceeded from the basket in the corner where Aida, the Pomeranian, lay curled in refreshing sleep.  Through the open window floated sounds of warmth and Summer.