"From me? He practically tells me to mind my own business. If there are any complaints, the fellow says, they'd better be addressed to you!" He paused for a moment. "He gives the impression that you'd back him up through thick and thin, and, what's more, he means to give it." "What does he say to give that impression?" she asked quickly. "He doesn't say much. It's a nod here, and a wink there--and a lot of vaporing, so I'm told, about having known you when you were a girl." "That's silly, but not very bad. Is that all?" "No. When one of my clerks--Harrison, a very steady man--gave him a friendly warning that he was going the right way about to lose his job, he said something very insolent." "What?" She was sitting very still, very intent. "He laughed and said he thought you knew better than that. Said in the way he said it, it--it came to claiming some sort of hold on you, Miss Jenny. That's a very dangerous idea to get about." Cartmell was evidently thinking of the old story--of the episode of Cheltenham days. But had Powers been thinking of that? And was Jenny, with her bright eyes intent on Cartmell's face? She did not look alarmed--only rather expectant. She foresaw a fight with Powers, but had no doubt that she could beat him--if only the mischief had not gone too far. "He seemed to refer to--Cheltenham?" she asked, smiling. Cartmell was the embarrassed party to the conversation. "I--I'm afraid so, Miss Jenny," he stammered, and his red face grew even redder. "Oh, I'll settle that all right," Jenny assured him. "You'll give him the sack?" Cartmell asked bluntly. She had many good reasons to produce against that, just as she had produced many for bringing him to Catsford. "I'll reduce him to order, anyhow," she promised. That was what she wanted--to bring him to heel, not to lose him. But surely it was no longer for his own sake, nor even to satisfy that instinct of hers which forbade the alienation of the least of her human possessions? There was more than that in it. He was part of the scheme--he fitted into that explanation which my brain had insisted on conceiving as I walked home from Ivydene. Of this aspect of the case Cartmell was entirely innocent. By one of her calculated bits of audacity--concealing much, she would seem to have nothing to conceal--she took me with her when she went down to Ivydene the next morning, to haul Powers over the coals. She would have me present at the interview between them. Well, it may also have been that she did not want too much plain speaking--or, rather, preferred to do what was to be done in that line herself.