“There’s a way of showing that,” Nancy interrupted, with a degree more warmth in her tone. “If you mean what you say you’ll be willing to drop it——” She avoided the word “shop” or “business,” but Jagger understood her. “You’ll see for yourself you were too hasty, and if you’d only taken me into your confidence we could have planned something together that would have put a flea in Baldwin’s ear.” “What could we have planned?” asked Jagger, on whose horizon a ray of light was breaking, though he was still suspicious, still half-hostile because of the confidence of the girl’s rebuke. “We could have told him we were going to be married,” she said, “and you could have left the rest to me.” Perhaps the cold note that crept into her voice again was intended to screen the wave of colour that swept over her face, which Jagger never saw because he was gazing at a possibility. “I should have told him that he’d have to make you a partner, seeing that you were going to be my husband, and that it was my property and partly my money.” She ended haltingly, because her coldness was disappearing and she was drawing near to the starting point that she had planned before they met; also because she began to wonder if there had been anything bold and unmaidenly in her explanation. Half timidly she stole a glance at Jagger’s face, and the look she saw there stopped all further utterance. “And do you think I’d truckle to a man like Baldwin Briggs for all t’ partnerships i’ t’ world?” he broke in hotly. “Would I sell my soul to the devil for money? It’s bad enough to work for a man like him for wages; but to share t’ responsibility for all his thieving underhanded ways is a thing I wouldn’t have for all t’ brass i’ t’ Bank of England. Me a partner with Baldwin Briggs! I’ll beg i’ t’ streets first!” He drove the stick into the ground in his temper, and Nancy froze for a moment, and then a wave of hot anger and humiliation swept over her. “So that’s your love, is it?” she cried. “It’s to humble me and turn me away with your foot that you’ve come here! Thank God I’ve found you out before it was too late! Aye, and God forgive me ’at I should have lowered myself to talk o’ marrying you, only to be scorned and spat at. To tell me to my face that I’d have you sell your soul to the devil! I hate you, Jagger Drake! Get you gone before I sell my soul to the devil and do you a mischief! Get you gone, I say!”