Peter Digby seemed to begin a new chapter of life for the entire household. He took it for granted, whether intentionally or in ignorance, that his friend's marriage was a normal one, and proceeded to organize amusements and means of enjoying his stay with them to the full.

He booked theatre seats and arranged dinners, and refused to listen when Forrester protested.

"My dear chap!" he said, "I've got plenty of money, and I'm going to enjoy myself in my own way. I landed myself on you, and as I don't suppose you'll allow me to pay for my board and lodging I'm going to get my own back by taking the girls about as much as I can. Hang it all, I've never enjoyed anything so much in my life. What's the matter with you, you old bear?"

Forrester laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had been quick enough to see that both Faith and Peg had unanimously taken his friend to their hearts, and were having every bit as good a time with him as he was with them. Faith had never looked so well or so happy. The colour had come back to her cheeks and her eyes danced. She always seemed happy and light-hearted, and it gave the Beggar Man a stab of pain to know that Peter Digby had succeeded where he himself had so completely failed.

After the first few days he began to excuse himself from accompanying them on their pleasure trips. He was busy. He had a great deal to see to, so he said when Digby called him a slacker. In a sense it was true, for things at Heeler's were not going particularly well, and there had lately been a good deal of unrest amongst his workpeople.

Forrester kept all his worries to himself, and by doing so doubled his burden. There is nothing so hard to carry as a trouble unshared, but there was nobody in whom he could confide.

He had aged years since his marriage, and his hair was plentifully sprinkled with grey.

Peg alone noticed the change in him. There was very little that escaped her sharp eyes.

One day she walked boldly into his study and tackled him in her usual direct way.

"Mr. Forrester, why aren't you coming with us to-day?"

Peter Digby could drive Forrester's car, and had arranged to take the two girls for a long run into the country, and the Beggar Man had excused himself on the score of "work."

He was poring over a pile of papers when Peg opened the door and walked in.

"Why aren't you coming with us to-day?" she demanded.

She stood on the opposite side of his writing table, looking at his tired face with a wonderful softening in her eyes.

She was dressed for the drive, and looked rather like a handsome bird of Paradise in her bright green veil and red motor coat.

She still wore the swinging gipsy earrings, but lately they had somehow ceased to annoy Forrester; or perhaps he was beginning to realize that, after all, trifles count very little in the sum total of things.

He looked up at her with a pucker between his eyes.

"I told you—I'm too busy to come," he answered.

"I know that's what you said, but it's only an excuse, isn't it?" she asked bluntly.

Forrester smiled. "I don't think it's worth arguing about, anyway," he said.

"Don't you? Well, I do," said Peg. She went back and shut the door, which was on the jar only, and came again to stand beside him.

"There's none so blind as those who won't see," she said with seeming irrelevance.

Forrester laid down his pen and half turned in his chair.

"What do you mean?" he asked quietly.

Peg coloured a little, but her eyes met his steadily.

"I mean that you ought to look after your wife yourself," she said. There was no mistaking her meaning, and Forrester made no attempt to do so.

There was a little silence; then he laughed shortly.

"And supposing my wife refuses to allow me to look after her?" he asked.

Peg shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

"What's the good of being a big, strong man like you if you can't master one little slip of a girl?" she said.

The Beggar Man coloured.

"I've said all that to myself scores of times," he answered frankly; "but it's not in me to bully any woman. I thought it was; I know better now." He looked up at her deprecatingly. "You've been honest with me," he said, "and I'll be honest with you. My marriage is the biggest mistake of my life, and I've made a few in my time. If—if Faith wishes to be free of me, well——"

Peg pulled at the strings of her gaudy veil as if they were choking her.

"Oh, she's a fool—a silly little fool!" she cried bitterly. "Sometimes I can hardly keep my hands off her when I see——" She broke off, her passion dying away as quickly as it had arisen. "I beg your pardon," she said bluntly.

There was an eloquent silence; then she broke out again with a most strange humility:

"Mr. Forrester, come with us to-day. Please come with us."

Forrester knew Peg well enough to know also that there was some deep reason for her request, and, in spite of what he had just said, his heart contracted with a fierce pain as he thought of the rapidly-growing friendship between his wife and Digby.

"Please," said Peg again, and impulsively she laid her hand on his shoulder.

The Beggar Man looked down at her firm, strong fingers irresolutely. Then suddenly he lifted his hand and covered them with a warm pressure.

"Very well, but it's only because you have asked me," he said.

He rose and began pushing the pile of papers away into a drawer, and Peg walked out of the room, her head drooping, her face quivering.

She met Faith in the hall.

"I've been looking for you everywhere," the younger girl said. "Where have you been? Mr. Digby's been ready to start ever so long."

"I know. I was talking to Mr. Forrester," Peg answered defiantly.

Faith glanced towards the closed study door.

"I suppose I'd better go and say good-bye to him," she said with faint nervousness.

Peg laughed.

"You needn't trouble. He's coming, after all."

Faith's eyes widened.

"Coming with us? He said he couldn't!"

"I know. I made him change his mind."

She walked to the open front door and looked at the waiting car. Digby was standing beside it.

"Are you ready, Miss Fraser?" he asked with a touch of impatience.

"We're waiting for Mr. Forrester," Peg said casually. "He's coming, after all."

She was not slow to see the swift shadow of disappointment that crossed his face, though he said heartily enough:

"Changed his mind, has he? Good!"

"Yes; I persuaded him," Peg said laconically.

She was fully aware that Faith was close beside her, and it gave her a fierce sort of joy to know that the girl's eyes were turned upon her with the faintest shadow of suspicion in them.

When Forrester appeared Peg called to him quickly.

"Come and sit next to me, Mr. Forrester. The back seat's the most comfortable."

Faith's lips moved as if she would have spoken, but she closed them again and took her place beside Digby without comment.

Not one of the four could have said that the day was enjoyable. There was an intangible something in the air which they all could feel but none of them explain.

They drove into the heart of the country and lunched at a wayside inn. Faith was very quiet, and she kept glancing at Peg and her husband with scared eyes.

Afterwards, when they went out into the woods in their wonderful autumn tints, she found herself with Digby, and, looking quickly round, saw that her husband and Peg were some little distance behind, sauntering along leisurely and apparently the best of friends.

She could hear Forrester's deep voice and Peg's rather loud laugh, and a queer sense of unwantedness crept into her heart.

"A penny for your thoughts!" Digby said, touching her arm, and she started and smiled and said they were not worth anything.

"It would be a penny badly invested," she said with an effort at lightness.

Digby looked down at her and swiftly away again. He knew quite well that it was for this girl that he lingered so long in his friend's house, and there was bitterest envy in his heart.

Forrester had always been lucky. The best of this world's goods had always gone his way.

He had envied him for his business capabilities and gift of making money, but he envied him more now because he had this girl for his wife.

"Aren't the woods lovely?" Faith asked, with an effort to break the silence. "I've never seen anything quite so lovely."

"You must get Forrester to take you abroad," Digby said, stifling a sigh. "Have you ever been out of England?"

"No."

"Always lived in London?"

"Yes."

"You haven't really begun to live yet, then," he told her.

Their eyes met, and there was a queer, wistful look in the man's that brought the colour rushing to Faith's cheeks, though she hardly knew why. She stopped dead and looked back through the leafy wood.

"Shall we wait for the others?" she asked nervously.

It was some seconds before Peg and Forrester joined them.

"Mrs. Forrester tells me that she has never been out of England," Digby said. "And I tell her that if that is so she has not yet begun to live! London's all right—finest place in the world, bar none, but to appreciate it properly you ought to go away from it for months."

"I hate London," Faith said impulsively.

He opened his eyes in amazement.

"Really! What part have you lived in?"

Faith coloured and did not answer, but Peg broke in in her usual blunt way:

"Poplar. That's where she lived till she got married. I lived there, too. It's a frightful hole! No wonder she hates London; you would if you'd seen the rotten side of it as we have."

Faith glanced quickly at her husband. She was so sure that he would be angry with Peg for her frankness, but to her surprise he was smiling.

"One would hardly choose the East End for a permanent residence, certainly," Digby said, in some perplexity; "but everyone to their taste."

"It wasn't a question of 'taste,'" Peg said dryly; "it was more like Hobson's choice. I had to be where the bread and cheese was, and it happened to be in Poplar—that's all."

There was a little silence. Digby was beginning to see that he was on delicate ground.

"I think we ought to be turning back," Forrester said.

They retraced their steps silently.

"Shall we change places going home?" Faith asked, as she slipped into her big coat when they reached the car again. She looked at Peg. "Perhaps you would rather sit in the front for a change," she said hesitatingly.

Peg looked at the Beggar Man, and he answered for her readily:

"We were quite comfortable as we were, I think, Miss Fraser?"

"Quite," said Peg.

Faith took a hurried step towards Digby.

"Oh, very well. I would really prefer to sit in the front; I only thought it would look rather selfish."

There was a note of uncertainty in her voice, and Peg's blue eyes gleamed with a vixenish light as she settled herself comfortably beside Forrester.

They were rather silent on the way home, but beneath her gaudy veil Peg's quick brain was hard at work.

She knew that Faith was faintly resentful, if not actively jealous, and a sense of triumph warmed her heart.

She had read in one of her favourite novelettes of a heroine who had never appreciated the goodness and worth of the man to whom she was married until another woman—a "syren" she had been called in the story—had stolen him from her, and with a wild flight of sentimental imagination she already saw herself nicely fitted with the part.

She stole a little glance at Forrester, and a sigh shook her. What happiness to be loved by such a man! Nothing that she had ever come across in fiction could yield half such exquisite bliss.

To be his wife! To be with him always!... She lost herself in a world of dreams.

Never once did she think now of his wealth, nor the advantages to be gained from it. The man himself filled the picture of her thoughts. She could have been equally happy with him in the dreary streets of Poplar as in the luxury of the house at Hampstead.

How she had hated him at first! How she had sneered at Faith and tried to set her against him, and now the scales had tipped the other way and left her kneeling at his feet.

She was humble enough to know herself far below him, shrewd enough to realize that, though she might find it heaven to be with him, his happiness could never lie with her. She knew that she jarred on him in a thousand ways, though lately she had recognized that he had subtly changed towards her, was kinder, more tolerant, and for one wild moment she allowed her thoughts to soar up into the blue skies of impossibility.

King Cophetua had loved the Beggar Maid and been happy with her. Why should the day of such miracles be at an end? She looked again at the man beside her, and saw that his eyes were fixed on his wife with such a look of sadness in them that she felt the tears rising to her own.

He loved Faith. Whatever he might say or pretend, Peg knew that he loved her, and she gripped her hands beneath the cover of the rug. What a fool Faith was! What a blind little fool, that she could laugh and be merry with a man like Digby when this king amongst men was waiting for her to look his way.

And the pendulum of Peg's emotions swung back again. After all, what was her own happiness compared with his? And her thoughts flew to the latest and as yet unfinished novelette lying on her bed at home in which the Lady Gwendoline Maltravers had just dropped gracefully on to her aristocratic knees to plead for her lover's honour with the brutal squire who had sworn to ruin him.

"Take me! Body and soul I will be yours, if only you will spare him! Spare the man I love, and give him his happiness!"

Peg thought it a noble and lofty sentiment, and a curious feeling of sympathy and kinship with the Lady Gwendoline swept through her heart.

She, too, if the occasion arose could sacrifice everything—body and soul—in order that the man she loved might be happy.