“Since you were kicked out,” adds Mr. Robert.  “See here, Bunny—­just because I’ve helped you out of the gutter when I thought you were half dead, don’t run away with the idea that I’ve either forgotten or forgiven!”

“Oh, quite so,” says he.  “I’m not asking that.”

“Then you’ve no excuse,” goes on Mr. Robert, “for the sneaking, cowardly way in which you left little Sally Slater waiting in her bridal gown, the house full of wedding guests, while you ran off with that unspeakable DeBrett person?”

“No,” says Bunny, flippin’ his cigarette ashes off jaunty, “no excuse worthy of the name.”

“Cad!” says Mr. Robert.

Bunny shrugs his shoulders.  “Precisely,” says he.  “But you are not making the discovery for the first time, are you?  You knew Sally was far too good for me.  Everyone did, even Brother Melly.  It couldn’t have been much of a secret to either of you how deep I was with the DeBrett too.  Yet you wanted me to go on with Sally.  Why?  Because the governor hadn’t chucked me overboard then, because I could still keep up a front?”

“You might have taken a brace,” says Mr. Robert.

“Not I!” says Bunny.  “Anyway, not after Trixie DeBrett got hold of me.  The trouble was, Bob, you didn’t half appreciate her.  She had beauty, brains, wit, a thousand fascinations, and no more soul than a she boa constrictor.  I was just a rabbit to her, a meal.  She thought the governor would buy her off, say, for a couple hundred thousand or so.  I suppose he would too, if it hadn’t been for the Sally complication.  He thought a lot of little Sally.  And the way it happened was too raw.  I don’t blame him, mind you, nor any of you.  I don’t even blame Trixie.  That was her game.  And, by Jove! she was a star at it.  I’d go back to her now if she’d let me.”

“You’re a fool!” snorts Mr. Robert.

“Always was, my dear Bob,” says Bunny placid.  “You often told me as much.”

“But I didn’t think,” goes on Mr. Robert, “you’d get as low as—­as tonight—­begging!”

“Quite respectable for me, I assure you,” says Bunny.  “Why, my dear fellow, during the last few years there’s been hardly a crime on the calendar I shouldn’t have committed for a dollar—­barring murder, of course.  That requires nerve.  How long do you suppose the few thousands I got from Aunt Eunice lasted?  Barely six months.  I thought I knew how to live rather luxuriously myself.  But Trixie!  Well, she taught me.  And we were in Paris, you know.  I didn’t cable the governor until I was down to my last hundred-franc note.  His reply was something of a stinger.  I showed it to Trixie.  She just laughed and went out for a drive.  She didn’t come back.  I hear she picked up a brewer’s son at Monte Carlo.  Lucky devil, he was!