When Peg went to Faith's room that night for their usual gossip, she found the door locked against her.

She rattled the handle impatiently and called:

"Faith!"

There was no answer, and she rapped on the panel, a vague feeling of surprise in her heart.

"Faith! It's only me—let me in."

There was an answer then.

"I've gone to bed—I'm tired."

"Tired!" Peg echoed the word with disdainful incredulity. She did not see how Faith could be tired after a day of such ease. She herself was as fresh and wide awake as a lark.

"You can't be tired," she said emphatically, and rattled the handle once more. "Faith, let me come in. Does your head ache?"

"Of course not, but I want to go to sleep. Good-night."

There was such finality in the voice that the colour rose to Peg's handsome face. It was the first time she had ever been shut out from Faith's confidence, and she searched her mind wildly for some reason that would explain things.

What had she done? How had she offended?

As she stood there, her fingers on the handle of the locked door, the Beggar Man came up the stairs.

He had heard Peg's rather loud, insistent voice from the smoking-room below, and had momentarily left his friend to see if anything was the matter.

Peg blushed fiery red when she saw him. Her black hair was unbound and streaming down over her shoulders. She wore a brilliant cherry-coloured dressing-gown, and her feet were thrust into gaudy Oriental slippers.

"Oh, my gracious!" she said with a gasp.

Forrester's eyes met hers indifferently, though he would have been less than human had he been blind to the picture she made as she stood there in the half-light.

The brilliant gown she wore, her dark hair, and the bright, confused colour in her cheeks accentuated her beauty, for Peg was a beauty, even if it was of a crude, rather vulgar type, and unconsciously Forrester's eyes grew admiring as he asked: "Is anything the matter? I thought you called."

Peg laughed nervously.

"Faith won't open the door, that's all. She says she's tired. There's nothing the matter." Then she giggled, and swung her long hair back from her shoulders. "I didn't think you'd come up," she apologized.

The Beggar Man coloured a little.

"I thought perhaps something might be the matter," he said awkwardly, and turned to go downstairs again, when quite suddenly Faith's door opened and she came out.

There was a moment of embarrassed silence. Then Peg laughed.

"It's like a bit out of a novelette, isn't it?" she said shrilly, driven by her sheer and unaccountable nervousness to say the wrong thing. "Heroine opens her door and finds her best friend talking to her husband—tÊte-À-tÊte, as it were."

She pronounced the French words quite incorrectly, and she struck a melodramatic pose, one hand flung out towards Forrester and the other pressed hard over her heart.

The Beggar Man looked at his wife.

"I heard Miss Fraser calling to you," he said stiffly, "and I thought perhaps something might be the matter. That is all." He waited a moment, his eyes seeking Faith's wistfully.

The two girls made a strong contrast. One so small and pale and fair and the other so tall, with her dark, gipsy-like beauty.

But Faith did not even glance his way, and with a half-sigh Forrester went on down the stairs, and they heard the shutting of the smoking-room door.

Faith turned to close her own again, but Peg was too quick for her. She was past her and inside the room instantly. She sat down on the side of the bed and looked at the younger girl with challenging eyes.

"Well—out with it," she said defiantly. "What have I done?"

Faith did not answer. There was a look in her blue eyes that Peg had never seen there before—an aloofness in her manner that was almost painfully eloquent—and after a second of utter astonishment Peg sprang to her feet and caught Faith roughly by the arm, peering down to look into her face.

"What are you thinking?" she demanded.

Faith tried to free herself, but she was a child in Peg's muscular grasp, until with a little contemptuous exclamation Peg released her and turned away.

"Jealous! Is that it?" she asked crudely. "Jealous! Because the man you won't look at yourself happened to see me with my hair loose and this gown on."

She walked over to the long glass in Faith's dressing-table and regarded her gaudy reflection with fiery eyes.

"I do look rather a picture, don't I?" she said deliberately. "It only wants a cigarette in my mouth or a red rose in my hair to make me look like one of those dancing girls—the French ones, I mean. What do you call them—apache or something." She pronounced that word wrongly also.

Faith did not answer, and Peg laughed.

"I'd never be such a dog in the manger," she said mockingly.

Her heart was beating fast with a sudden wild hope.

Was there any cause for Faith to be jealous? Had Forrester at last ceased to be indifferent to her? She recalled the slow look of admiration in his eyes, and her pulses leapt.

Well, Faith would have none of him! Could she be surprised if, after all that had happened.... But before the thought was complete in her mind she was ashamed of it. She turned away from the mirror, and looked at Faith with angry eyes.

"You little idiot!" she said, with good-natured irritation. "Do you think he'd look at me if ...?" Then once again she stopped.

Supposing unconsciously she had begun to teach Faith a lesson. Supposing by allowing her to be jealous it might be the means of making her care for Forrester—at last!

She caught her breath with a little exultant sound. She had so longed to make him happy, and if the only way to do so was by giving him his wife at the sacrifice of her own love, well—who was she to complain?

He had done everything for her. He had taken her from the sordid surroundings where she had passed all the days of her life. He had done his best to make a lady of her. He had trusted her, treated her as a friend. Was there any sacrifice too great to make in return?

Peg was not one to hesitate once an idea had taken shape in her mind, and even as Faith looked at her she saw the dark, handsome face harden and grow defiant as she turned with a shrug of her shoulders and opened the closed door.

"Well, I've been in pleasanter company, I must say!" she said in her old nonchalant tone. "So I'll leave you to yourself. Good-night, fair Lady Elaine, and pleasant dreams!"

She swept Faith a low, mocking curtsy, the folds of her cherry-coloured gown sweeping the floor all around her, then she laughed and went off to her own room.

Faith ran to the door and shut and locked it. Her throat was throbbing with suppressed sobs and her lips shook.

She had been so fond of Peg. She had looked up to her and admired her, but to-night she could find it in her heart to hate her for her handsome beauty and insolence.

She, too, had seen the look of admiration in Forrester's eyes, and a little sick suspicion rose above the angry tumult of her heart.

Supposing he really did like Peg? Supposing he more than liked her? She was handsome enough to take any man's fancy, and Faith knew how badly Forrester had suffered over the disappointment of his marriage.

A hundred little incidents came crowding back to her mind, cruelly magnified. The way he invariably chose to talk to Peg in preference to herself. The way he had elected to sit with her at the back of the car that afternoon, though she had offered to change places. The way he had overruled her objections with regard to Peg's gaudy choice of decoration when first they came to the house.

"What does it matter if it pleases her?" he had said, in his careless way. "I like to see her happy."

She had thought nothing of it at the time, but it seemed a great matter now. And at the memory of Peg's crude accusation the blood rushed stingingly to Faith's pale cheeks.

"I'm not jealous! How dare she say so? I hate her—I hate her!"

She spoke the words in a whisper through the silent room and the bitter sound of them frightened her.

Hate Peg! Oh, no, she did not mean that. Peg had been a good friend to her—Peg had never failed.

Faith tried hard to recover her composure and look at things more sensibly.

After all, what had happened? Little enough, she knew, but she could not forget the picture Peg had made during those moments on the landing or the look of admiration in the Beggar Man's eyes.

She had felt herself colourless and insignificant beside Peg, and her soul writhed as she recalled the mocking, nervous words that the elder girl had spoken.

"It's like a bit out of a novelette, isn't it?... Heroine opens her door and finds her best friend talking to her husband, tÊte-À-tÊte, as it were."

Though she knew that Peg had meant no harm, and though she had heard her say similar things scores of times before, to-night somehow the words grated deeply on Faith's sensitiveness.

It was as if someone had held up a scorching light in front of her friend, showing just how rough and unrefined she really was and could be.

Faith remembered how, not so long ago, Forrester had told her that he wished her friendship with Peg to cease. Did he wish it still?

She lay awake for hours, turning things over in her mind, torturing herself with doubts and perplexities.

It was not that she cared for him at all, so she told herself again and again. It was just that it was so horrible to think that perhaps he and Peg ... and then once more her better nature came uppermost. How could she think such base things? How dared she? Peg was her best friend, had proved herself in a thousand ways, and Forrester—when had he ever been anything but kind and considerate?

She was bound to admit that last truth now, though for weeks she had tried to hate him, and had blamed him for the death of both her parents.

She turned the pillow over and tried to sleep.

"I don't care. I wish I could be free. I don't care," she told herself, but when at last she fell asleep it was to dream of her husband as he had been during the first days of their acquaintance; to dream of the kindliness of his eyes and the clasp of his hand, and her own feeling of warmth and gratitude towards him.

She woke in the morning unrefreshed, and with a bad headache. She dreaded meeting Peg, but she need not have done, for Peg greeted her as if nothing had happened, with a kiss and her usual cheery, "Hullo, Faith! Had a bad night? You look pale enough."

"I had a very good night," Faith answered emphatically. "And I'm ever so hungry."

But at breakfast she ate nothing, and Digby watched her with concerned eyes.

"We've rushed you about too much lately," he said. "You're not strong like Miss Fraser."

"Me! Oh, I'm as strong as a horse," Peg said cheerfully. "Nothing ever tires me!"

Forrester looked across at her and laughed, and Faith clenched her hands in her lap.

There seemed such a spirit of comradeship between these two, she wondered why she had never noticed it before.

When breakfast was over she followed her husband into the hall. As a rule, she avoided him, and he looked up in surprise as she stood beside him while he brushed his coat and hat.

"Have you got to go to the City to-day?" she asked at last with an effort.

He echoed her words blankly:

"Have I got to go? What do you mean?"

"Only that"—she hesitated nervously—"only—it's so fine, I thought perhaps you might stay at home."

Forrester flushed a little, but he only said dryly, "Oh, I see," and got into his coat.

Faith watched him with timid eyes, that yet held a dawning resolution. Yesterday he had gone motoring with them to please Peg, and because Peg had asked him. Would he stay at home this morning to please her, if she could find the courage to ask him?

"I've a great deal to see to to-day," he went on lightly. "There's been trouble down at Heeler's, you know."

Faith knew, but it had not interested her. She never wished to think of Heeler's any more. It was like another part of her life—a part she only wanted to forget.

The Beggar Man had turned to the door.

"Well, good-bye," he said constrainedly.

Another moment and he would be gone, she knew, and, in desperation, Faith took a quick step towards him....

"Nicholas ... will you ... I want you to stay at home."

She was crimson, and she could not meet his eyes; but she knew his were upon her, and her heart seemed to stop beating while she waited for his answer.

It was a long time coming. Then the Beggar Man said, very gently:

"I am sorry. I am afraid it is quite impossible, Faith."

She drew back at once.

"Oh ... very well!" she said blankly, and the next moment he had gone....

Faith stood for some seconds staring at the closed door. She felt as if someone had struck her across the face.

It was the first time she had ever definitely asked a favour of him, and he had refused!

Peg, coming into the hall, noticed her pallor.

"What's the matter, little 'un?" she asked in concern, but Faith would not answer. She went upstairs to her room, and after a moment Peg followed.

"What's up?" she asked again. "Anything I can do?"

There was a momentary silence, then Faith said, in a queer, cold little voice:

"Yes. Come in; I want to speak to you."

Peg obeyed. There was an amused smile hovering round the corners of her mouth. "I'm all attention," she said. "Fire away."

Faith's hands were trembling and she clasped them together to hide the humiliating fact.

"I've been thinking," she said, with an effort. "I've been thinking that—that though you've been very kind, I...." She could not go on.

Peg looked up, a gleam of fire in her eyes. She knew without further words what it was that Faith was trying to tell her.

"You mean you want me to clear out?" she said bluntly.

Faith wavered for a moment; then she thought of the way in which Forrester had refused her request five minutes ago, though yesterday he had been so easily persuaded by Peg. "You need not put it like that," she said hoarsely, "but ... yes, that is what I mean."

The crimson blood swept Peg's face and died away again, leaving her as white as marble. It was the last thing of which she had ever dreamed that this child—this baby—would ever turn her out of the house!

Her loyal heart felt as if it must burst with shame and pain, but she shrugged her shoulders with a brave display of indifference.

"Well, I'll see what Mr. Forrester says," she answered coolly. "If he wants me to go—well.... He's master of the house, isn't he? I came here because he asked me to, and so I guess I'll take my marching orders from him."