"He's left Hammerstone Market," he went on. "Made it a bit too hot to hold him, I fancy. And he's been saying mad things about me—and about you." He turned his head sharply, and looked at me, and repeated the words—"About you."
"It will not trouble me very much, whatever he says," I retorted.
"Don't be too sure; he's a dangerous man," said my guardian. "He'll talk about any one, and it's all lies. I shouldn't be surprised"—he turned to the picture again, and examined it—"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't say something more about me one of these days."
"I remember that I heard him threaten to talk," I remarked. "But surely a man in your position can afford to laugh at him and his threats?"
"That's where you're wrong," broke in Fanshawe quickly. "It's the men in my position that can have lies told about them, lies which they dare not refute. I tell you he's a dangerous man. More than that, he has been talking about—about somebody else."
He walked the length of the room, keeping his back to me, and examined another of my sketches. I felt my throat beginning to swell, and knew that the blood was rising to my face; controlling my voice as well as I could, I asked a question. "Who is—who is the somebody else?"
He turned round, and came towards me, keeping his hands locked behind him. "About Barbara—Barbara Patton," he said. "It seems he saw you that day in the woods—the day I was there. And Hockley is not the man to talk nicely about those things."
Jervis Fanshawe fell back a step or two as I came straight up to him; indeed, he unlocked his hands, and put up one of them as though to guard against a blow. "What did he say?" I asked; and my voice sounded unnatural.
He shook his head. "I'm not going to tell you; I'm the last man in the world to make mischief," he said. "You're a hot-headed boy, and I ought not to have told you. You'll get nothing more from me."
"Then I'll get it from him," I said, with a little grim laugh.