Faith went back to the factory the next day and asked to be taken on again. Miss Dell would like to have refused, but she met Peg's fierce eyes across the room and changed her mind, and Faith was reinstated.

There was not much time for talking that morning. There was a rush of work on hand and hardly a moment to spare, but during the dinner hour Peg asked a storm of questions.

"What has happened? He's not coming back, of course! What a brute! Didn't I always say he was a brute?"

Faith shivered.

There were moments when she still clung passionately to the hope that there was some mistake—that when he came back he would be able to explain and put matters right. And there were other times when she shrank from the very thought of him, and only wished to be able to forget those few days of delirium.

She would not even confide in Peg. All she would do was to beg her to ask no questions.

"It's all over and done with," she said tremblingly. "You said he would not come back. I hope he never will."

"I said I should not be at all surprised if he didn't," Peg answered. "But, of course, he may do. Sometimes in novelettes the villain of the story turns out to be the hero after all, you know."

Faith did not think it was at all likely in this case, and the days began slowly to creep away.

When a fortnight had gone and the seventeenth day drew near, panic closed about her heart. Supposing he came after all?

She had had no word from him, and she hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. Perhaps it meant that he never would come back. She wished she could believe this.

At other times, lying awake at night in her little room with its sloping roof, against her will she was forced to remember every word the Beggar Man had said to her, every kindly action that he had done, and there was always a great unanswered question in her mind.

"Why did he marry me if he was bad, as they say he is? He need not have married me. There are heaps of other girls in the world."

Mr. Shawyer wrote and begged her to go and see him, but she neither went nor answered the letter.

She spent as much of her time with Peg as possible, and the elder girl once more resumed her rÔle of friend and protector.

"If you're worrying about that good-for-nothing!" she said to Faith one day in her blunt manner, "you're a little fool. There are as good fish in the sea as any that were caught, my girl, and don't you make any mistake. Let old Scammel stay in America. Jolly good riddance, I say!"

Faith did not answer, but her nerves were tearing her to pieces. Every time a man's voice sounded in the passages of the factory or a door opened suddenly she was sure it was the Beggar Man come back to find and claim her. Every time she heard the sound of a motor coming up the street her heart beat so fast she could hardly breathe. She never knew how she dragged through the seventeenth day, but it passed somehow, and the eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth, and still there was no sign of Nicholas Forrester.

She began to pluck up courage. He would not come now, she was sure. If he had returned to England he had found her wedding ring and the returned money and had understood what she meant. Perhaps even he had repented as much as she, long before he got back home.

Or perhaps he was still abroad! That would be best of all, if she could only be sure that the sea was still dividing them.

Five days after Nicholas was due to return Mrs. Ledley spoke of him.

"He'll never come back, Faith." There was triumphant thankfulness in her voice. "Somehow I felt all along that he would never come back."

Faith could not answer. Though her fear had decreased it was not yet dead, and only last night she had dreamed of the Beggar Man, dreamed that she was on one side of a locked door on which he knocked, knocked ceaselessly. It was early evening, and Faith had come home from work to find Mrs. Ledley dressed to go out.

"You won't be long, mother, will you?" she urged. She dreaded being alone in the house. Though it was early evening, the twins were in bed and asleep, and everything seemed very still.

"I shan't be long," her mother answered, "but I must have a breath of air. The house has stifled me all day. I can't breathe at all sometimes."

Faith watched her down the street and went back indoors.

And Mrs. Ledley had not been gone more than half an hour, when there was a great knocking at the outer door. Shaking in every limb, Faith went to open it. A strange woman stood there, and down at the gate was a little crowd and a policeman. The strange woman put kind arms round the girl's shrinking figure and told her as gently as she could that something terrible had happened, but that she must try to be brave and——

"Mother!" said Faith. She broke away like a mad thing from the arms that would have held her and rushed to the gate. She gave one look at the white face of the woman they were carrying home and screamed, hiding her face with distraught hands.

Mrs. Ledley was dead. She had been walking along quite naturally, so they said, and suddenly had been seen to fall.

There was nothing to be done. Hard work and sorrow and bitterness had taken their toll of her strength and ended her life.

Faith could not shed a tear. After that first wild scream she had been silent. She went to the room where the twins lay sleeping and crouched down beside them, desperately holding a chubby hand of each.

Downstairs a kindly neighbour was in charge of the house; presently she came upstairs to Faith and bent over her.

"A gentleman, dearie. I told him you couldn't see anyone, but he seemed so distressed. I promised to tell you. He says he must see you, and such a nice gentleman he is."

Faith turned her face away.

"I can't! I don't want anyone! Leave me alone!"

The woman sighed and went away, and presently another step ascended the narrow stairs—a man's heavier step.

Faith was crouched against the bed, facing the door, her eyes closed, her cheek pressed to the sleeping hands to which she clung. Someone spoke her name through the silent room: "Faith!" and then again, with deepest pity: "Faith!"

The girl did not move. For a moment she thought she was dreaming, and that the voice had spoken in her dream. Then as she looked up with a wild hope that it was so—that all the past hour would prove to be nothing but a terrible nightmare—her dazed, piteous eyes met those of the Beggar Man.

All his life Nicholas Forrester remembered that room with its sloping roof and poor furniture, and the sleeping twins lying on the bed, with Faith, little more than a child herself, crouched on the floor beside them.

Hot evening sunshine shone through the narrow window and fell right upon the motherless little group, as with a stifled exclamation he went forward and, stooping, lifted Faith to her feet.

"My poor little girl," he said, keeping his arms round her, and though she made no effort to resist him, she stood apathetically enough, only turning her head away when he would have kissed her.

He broke out into incoherent explanations.

"I only got to Liverpool last night. We ran into a fog-bank and had to reduce speed. I tried to let you know but it seemed hopeless. I came as quickly as I could."

She heard what he said disinterestedly, wondering why he chose to make explanations at all, and when he had finished she looked at him with dazed brown eyes.

"Mother is dead; did they tell you?"

"The woman downstairs told me. I can't tell you how grieved I am. If I had only been here. If I had only been able to help."

The girl looked at him blankly; he had a kind face she thought, even as she had thought that time of their first meeting, but now she knew that he was not really kind or anything that he looked. He was Scammel who had ruined her father, Scammel for whose sake all those girls at Heeler's factory worked and sweated, and made money whereby to enrich him.

"I don't know why you came here, anyway," she said helplessly.

He flushed and bit a lip, but he answered gently enough: "I came straight to you, of course! Who had a better right! Have you forgotten so soon that you are my wife?"

She held out her bare left hand.

"I sent your ring back. I am sorry I ever married you. It's all over and done with."

He took but little notice of her words. He knew that she was overwrought and broken-hearted, and that it was no time now to press his claim.

The twins began to rouse, and sat up, two rosy-cheeked youngsters with eyes still drowsy with sleep, but which opened widely enough at sight of the stranger.

"Is it teatime?" was their first demand, regardless of the fact that they had had their tea hours ago, and Forrester answered that supper was ready downstairs. Would they like to be carried?

They made a wild rush at him immediately, but Faith was too quick for him. She put her arms round both the children, and looked at him across their tousled heads with defensive eyes.

"They're all I've got in the world," she said hoarsely. "You can't have them, too."

The Beggar Man did not answer. He followed them down the stairs to the sitting-room, where the kindly neighbour had made more tea, more for something to do than for any other reason, but the twins consumed slice after slice of bread and jam uncomplainingly, and regarded the Beggar Man with eyes of smiling interest.

"Do you like chocolates?" he inquired when the meal was ended. "Well, run along to a shop and buy some." He gave them half a crown, and bundled them out of the room amid shrieks of delight, then he shut the door and went back to where Faith sat by the window, her listless eyes on the sunbaked street.

He stood beside her silently for a moment. Then he asked gently:

"How soon can you be ready to leave this house—to-morrow?"

She looked up.

"I don't know what you mean. I am never going to leave it. I shall stay here and work for the twins, as mother did."

Her voice faltered a little as she spoke that beloved name, but no tears came, and Forrester said patiently:

"You cannot stay here. It's impossible. You must let me see to things for you. I promise you that everything shall be done exactly as you wish." He waited, but she did not speak, and he said again with a touch of impatience in his voice:

"Faith, you are angry with me. What have I done?"

She temporized, with the feeling that as yet she could not bring herself to say all that she knew she meant to say sooner or later.

"You never wrote to me." The words were apathetic. She had not cared whether he wrote to her or not.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I had no chance, and what sense was there in writing? I have got here almost as soon as a letter would have done." He walked a pace from her and came back. "I'm a bad hand at writing, anyway," he said, sombrely.

She was looking again into the street, and the weary outline of her face touched his heart.

"I thought of you all the time," he said, impulsively. "I cursed every minute that we were delayed."

She asked another question.

"Have you been to your flat?"

"I came straight here, of course. I was anxious about you. I thought you might be wondering what had become of me."

She drew a long sigh.

"Then you haven't got it?"

"Haven't got what?" he asked gently.

She rose to her feet.

"My ring and the money. It was all a mistake. I don't want to be married to you any more." She regarded him with wide, frightened eyes. For the first time it was slowly dawning upon her that perhaps it was not such an easy thing to get unmarried as it had been to get married.

"Please!" she added with faint appeal.

The Beggar Man's face hardened.

"My dear child," he said as patiently as he could, "it's not possible to stop being married like that, for no reason! Come, Faith, be reasonable! I make every allowance for you. I—I'm grieved at your mother's death, but...."

The burning colour rushed suddenly to the girl's face. Her blank eyes woke into life and passion.

"Grieved! When you helped to kill her!" she cried. She broke into wild laughter. "When you helped to kill her!" she said again helplessly.

The Beggar Man caught her by both arms.

"Faith! For God's sake," he said hoarsely. He thought that the shock of her mother's death had turned her brain. He tried to draw her to him, but she resisted him fiercely.

"You killed my father and ruined his life," she went on, raving. "You killed my father, and now you've killed my mother. Oh, I wish I could die, too! I wish I had never seen you." And quite suddenly she seemed to collapse, and would have fallen but for Forrester's upholding arms.

He laid her down on the couch by the window, and called to the kindly neighbour. The doctor had just arrived for Mrs. Ledley, and he came at once to Faith.

Forrester stood by, pale and anxious.

"The mother is dead, of course?" he asked once hopelessly, and the doctor looked up for a moment to answer.

"She must have died instantly. It was heart failure!" His eyes searched the young man's agitated face.

"May I ask who you are?" he inquired, faintly amazed.

"Yes." The Beggar Man glanced down at Faith.

"She is my wife," he said, briefly.

"Your wife! That child!" The amazed words were out before the doctor could check them, and he hastened to apologize. "I beg your pardon, but she looks so young."

"She is young," said the Beggar Man, flintily. "I am nearly twenty years older than she is."

Faith was coming back to consciousness, and the doctor said hurriedly: "I think it will be better for you to go away for the present, if you will—I want her to be kept quite quiet."

Nicholas went out into the narrow passage. The twins had returned and were squabbling over an enormous bag of sticky sweets. They hailed Nicholas with delight.

"I thought I said you were to buy chocolates?" he said, with pretended severity.

He sat down on the stairs and took the bag from them, dividing it into equal parts and sharing out its contents. "Ough! How sticky," he complained, with a little grimace.

"Nice!" said the twins, unanimously. They were quite happy; nobody had told them, poor mites, of their irreparable loss.

Nicholas did his best to amuse them. He was worried and unhappy, but he racked the recesses of his brain for forgotten fairy tales, and told them of the wolves that used to howl over the prairie at night when he was a boy and of a tiger which his father had once shot in India.

They listened, wide-eyed and wondering, and when at last he paused they both scrambled to their feet.

"Tell Mums! Go and tell Mums!"

That was the beginning of the trouble. In vain he tried to put them off with stories that their mother was not well, that her head ached, that she was lying down and must not be disturbed. The twins were disbelieving, grew angry, and finally broke into tears and sobs.

Nicholas took them up, one on each arm, and carried them into the kitchen. He was afraid they would disturb Faith. He sat down in a big old armchair, a child on each knee, and soothed and petted, and made vague promises for the morrow if they were good, until finally they both fell asleep with his arms round them.

It was getting late then. A clock on the kitchen shelf struck eight, but Nicholas was afraid to move. His arms were cramped, and he was racked with anxiety for Faith, but he sat doggedly on until the kindly neighbour and the doctor came to him.

The doctor smiled as he saw Forrester's burdens, and the kindly neighbour came forward with little murmurs of sympathy, and carried the twins away one at a time, still sleeping, to bed.

The Beggar Man stood up and stretched his arms.

"Well! This is a bad business," he said despondently.

"Yes." The doctor was looking at him with puzzled eyes. "You must forgive me," he said at last, "but I have known Mrs. Ledley and her family for several years now, and I had no idea that the child in the next room was married!"

Forrester coloured a little.

"We were married three weeks ago," he explained grudgingly. "And I had to leave her at once, on business, for America! I only got back last night and came here to find—this!" He looked round the room helplessly. "Of course everything will be all right," he added hurriedly. "I shall look after the children. There are only the two, aren't there?" he asked with a shade of anxiety.

The doctor smiled. "Yes, only the twins."

"And my wife? How is she?" the Beggar Man asked.

"She is suffering from shock, severe shock, of course, and must be kept perfectly quiet. I asked her if she wished to see you, and—I am sorry—but she said No! You must humour her, and not take it seriously," he explained kindly. "I asked if there was anyone she would like to see, and she said, 'Yes, Peg.' Do you know who Peg is?"

The Beggar Man frowned.

"Yes—a friend of hers."

The doctor turned away to the door. He was a kind man, but overworked and underpaid, and could not afford to waste a moment more than he was obliged.

"Well, I should send for her," he said briskly. "The woman here tells me she cannot stay all night. She has her own home and children to attend to. If you know where this 'Peg' is—send for her."

Forrester saw the doctor out, and went in search of the kindly neighbour who had tucked the twins up in bed, and was tidying the house.

He had no more idea than the dead how he was going to find Peg, but he asked the neighbour hopefully for information.

"Yes, I know her," she said. "I know her well—she lives about ten minutes away from here. Yes, I can give you her address."

Forrester wrote it down on his shirt cuff, promised to be back quickly, and went out.

The door of the room where Faith lay was open as he passed it, but some queer impulse prevented him from entering. She had said that she did not want him—well, he could wait.

But his heart was sore as he went up and down the narrow streets in search of Peg.

She was at the door of the house when he reached it, laughing and talking with a youth in a loud check suit and a highly-coloured tie, and her handsome face hardened as Forrester approached and raised his hat. She vouchsafed no answer to his "Good evening," only stared as he explained his errand.

"I think you are a friend of my wife's. She is ill, and has asked for you." He paused, and the youth in the check suit lounged off and down the street.

"My name is Forrester," the Beggar Man went on after a moment. "I don't know whether you have heard of me, but I have heard of you, and I know you are Faith's friend. Will you come? She is in great trouble. Her mother died suddenly this evening."

"Died!" Peg's eyes opened in horror. "Oh, poor kid!" she ejaculated. "Here, wait a minute." She turned into the house, and he heard her shouting to someone that she was going out and might not be home all night. Then she came back to him, banged the door behind her, and they set off down the road together.

People stared at them curiously as they passed, but Forrester was unconscious of it. He was not greatly prepossessed with Peg, but then few people were at first sight, although she was a handsome girl and magnificently built.

She was gaudily dressed for one thing, and Forrester hated gaudy clothes, and she wore long silver gipsy earrings and a string of bright green beads dangling from her neck.

She did not speak to him till they were nearly at their destination. Then she said bluntly:

"You've come back then?"

Forrester looked at her.

"Yes. I came back last night."

She gave a short laugh.

"I told Faith I didn't believe you would," she said.

He coloured angrily.

"I am much obliged to you, I am sure," he said, curtly.

Peg laughed again.

"Oh, don't mention it!" she said, airily. "I'm glad to be wrong for once in my life." She paused. "Faith's mighty fond of you," she added, almost threateningly.

Forrester frowned: he resented this girl's blunt, downright manner of speech, but Peg went on, quite indifferent to his obvious annoyance.

"She went for me hot and strong when I told her you were Ralph Scammel. Up like a spitfire she was!"

"When you told her—what?"

Her blue eyes met his defiantly.

"When I told her that you were Scammel and owned Heeler's," she repeated. "I knew, and I didn't see why she shouldn't know, too! Not that she believed it, though," she added, with a touch of chagrin. The Beggar Man made no answer, but he quickened his steps a little. He thought of Faith's strange manner towards him and Peg's words seemed all at once to have explained a great deal.