"Asked her if she'd like a foot-warmer for the journey to Dawlish." "Capital! You were about to tell me what you thought about it?" "The folly of a young ignorant girl, no doubt. Powers was an insinuating rascal--and a girl doesn't know at that age the difference between a gentleman and a cad. He moved too soon, though. We were in lots of time to prevent real mischief--and Mrs. Powers came up to the scratch!" He drummed his fingers on the window of the landau, looking thoughtful and, as it seemed to me, retrospectively puzzled. "And did all go smoothly with the clergyman's family?" "She's been there ever since. I've heard of no trouble. The governess's reports of her were excellent, I remember Mr. Driver telling me once." "Well then, we can forget all about Powers." "Yes, yes," said Cartmell, drumming his fingers still. "And what was she like?" Cartmell looked at me, a smile slowly breaking across his broad face. "Here's the station. Suppose you see for yourself," he suggested. We had ten minutes to wait before Miss Driver's train was due--we had been careful to run no risk of not being on the spot to receive her. Cartmell was at no loss to employ the time. I left him plunging into an animated discussion of the points of a handsome cob which stood outside the station: on the handsome cob's back was a boy, no less handsome, fresh of color and yellow-haired. I knew him to be young Lord Lacey, heir to the Fillingford earldom, but I had at that time no acquaintance with him, and passed on into the station, where I paced up and down among a crowd of loiterers and hasteners--for Catsford was by now a bustling center whence and whither men went and came at all hours of the day and most hours of the night. Driver had foreseen that this would come about! It had come about; he had grown rich; he lay dead. It went on happening still, and thereby adding to the piles of gold which he could no longer handle.