"Ah!" murmured Jessy. "Excuse me for a minute."
She left him astonished. He had not expected her to take him at a disadvantage, as she had done with her previous thrust, and now he did not think that she had slipped away to hide her feelings. That did not seem necessary in Jessy's case, though he believed she was more or less disturbed. She came back presently, looking calm, and sat down again.
"My brother will be here in a quarter of an hour," she informed him. "Things are rather slack, and he had half promised to take me for a drive. I have just called him up."
Carroll did not see how this bore upon the subject of their conversation, but he left her to take the lead.
"Did Mr. Vane tell you that I had promised to warn him?" she asked.
"To do him justice, he let it out before he quite realized what he was saying. I'd better own that I partly surprised him into giving me the information."
"The expedient seems a favorite one with you. I suppose no news of what has happened here can have reached him?"
"None. If it's any consolation, he has still an unshaken confidence in you," Carroll assured her with blunt bitterness.
The girl showed faint signs of confusion, but she sat silent for the next few moments. During that time it flashed upon Carroll with illuminating light that he had heard Celia Hartley say that Miss Horsfield had found her orders for millinery. This confirmed his previous suspicion that Jessy had discovered who had paid the rent of Celia's shack, and that she had with deliberate malice informed Evelyn, distorting her account so that it would tell against Vane. There were breaks in the chain of reasoning which led him to this conclusion, but he did not think that Jessy would shrink from such a course, and he determined to try a chance shot.
"Vane's inclined to be trustful, and his rash generosity has once or twice got him into trouble," he remarked, and went on as if an explanation were needed: "It's Miss Hartley's case I'm thinking about just now. I've an idea he asked you to look after her. Am I right?"