They did not know what they had been summoned for, and they were rather discontented.

'Just in the middle of a business man's business day!' ejaculated Arty Kane.

'Just as I'm generally sat down comfortably to lunch!' Miles Childwick grumbled.

'Just when I'm settling down to work after breakfast!' moaned Arty.

They were waiting in the sitting-room at Harriet Street. It was 2.15 in the afternoon. A hansom stood in the street; they had chartered it, according to orders received.

'What does she want us for?' asked Arty.

'A wanton display of dominion, in all likelihood,' suggested Miles gloomily.

'I'm not under her dominion,' objected Arty, who was for the moment devoted to a girl in the country.

'I've always maintained that you were no true poet,' said Miles disagreeably.

Peggy burst in on them—a Peggy raised, as it seemed, to some huge power of even the normal Peggy. She carried a lean little leather bag.

'Is the cab there?' she cried.

'All things in their order. We are here,' Miles reminded her with dignity.

'We've no time to lose,' Peggy announced. 'We've two places to go to, and we've got to be back here by a certain time—and I hope we shall bring somebody with us.'

'In the hansom?' asked Arty resignedly.

'In two hansoms—at least you know what I mean,' said Peggy.

'Isn't she a picture, Arty? Dear me, I beg your pardon, Miss Ryle. I didn't observe your presence. What happens to have painted you red to-day?'

'I'm in a terrible fright about—about something, all the same. Now come along. One of you is to get on one side of me and the other on the other; and you're to guard me. Do you see?'

'Orders, Arty!'

They ranged themselves as they were commanded, and escorted Peggy downstairs.

'Doesn't the hansom present a difficulty?' asked Arty.

'No. I sit in the middle, leaning back; you sit on each side, leaning forward.'

'Reversing the proper order of things, Miles——'

'In order to intercept the dagger of the assassin, Arty. And where to, General?'

'The London and County Bank, Trafalgar Square,' said Peggy, with an irrepressible gurgle.

'By the memory of my mother, I swear it was no forgery! 'Twas but an unaccustomed pen,' murmured Miles.

'I am equal to giving the order,' declared Arty proudly; he gave it with a flourish.

'How soon are we to have a look-in, Peggy?'

'Hush! She's killed another uncle!'

When the world smiled Peggy Ryle laughed aloud. It smiled to-day.

'See me as far as the door of the bank and wait outside,' she commanded, when she recovered articulate gravity.

Their external gloom deepened; they were enjoying themselves, immensely. Peggy's orders were precisely executed.

'Present it with a firm countenance,' Miles advised, as she left them at the entrance. 'Confidence, but no bravado!'

'It is no longer a capital offence,' said Arty encouragingly. 'You won't be hanged in silk knee-breeches, like Mr. Fauntleroy.'

Peggy marched into the bank. She opened the lean little bag, and took forth a slip of paper. This she handed to a remarkably tall and prim young man behind the counter. He spoilt his own effect by wearing spectacles, but accuracy is essential in a bank.

He looked at the amount on the cheque; then he looked at Peggy. The combined effect seemed staggering. He took off his spectacles, wiped them, and replaced them with an air of meaning to see clearly this time. He turned the cheque over. 'Margaret Ryle' met him in bold and decided characters. Tradition came to his rescue.

'How will you take it?' he asked.

Peggy burst out joyously: 'It's really all right, then?'

The prim clerk almost jumped. 'I—I presume so,' he stammered, and fled precipitately from the first counter to the third.

Peggy waited in some anxiety; old prepossessions were strong on her. After all, to write a cheque is one thing, to have it honoured depends on a variety of circumstances.

'Quite correct,' said the clerk, returning. He was puzzled; he hazarded a suggestion: 'Do you—er—wish to open——?'

'Notes, please,' said Peggy.

He opened a drawer with many compartments.

'Hundreds!' cried Peggy suddenly. She explained afterwards that she had wanted as much 'crackle' as the little bag would hold.

The clerk licked his forefinger. 'One—two—three—four——'

'Why should he ever stop?' thought Peggy, looking on with the sensation a millionaire might have if he could keep his freshness.

'Thank you very much,' she beamed, with a gratitude almost obtrusive, as she put the notes in the bag. She was aware that it is not correct to look surprised when your friends' cheques are honoured, but she was not quite able to hold the feeling in repression.

Her bodyguard flung away half-consumed cigarettes and resigned themselves to their duties. A glance at the little bag showed that it had grown quite fat.

'Be very, very careful of me now,' ordered Peggy, as she stepped warily towards the hansom.

'There are seventy thousand thieves known to the police,' said Arty.

'Which gives one an idea of the mass of undiscovered crime in London,' added Miles. 'Now where to, mon GÉnÉral?'

'346 Cadogan Square,' Peggy told them. 'Oh, how I wish I could have a cigarette!'

Both sympathetically offered to have one for her.

'The smoke will embarrass the assassin's aim,' Miles opined sagely.

Arty broke out in a sudden discovery.

'You're going to Fricker's!' he cried.

'I have an appointment with Mr. Fricker,' said Peggy, with pretended carelessness.

'At last, Arty, I shall see the mansions of the gilt.'

'No, you'll wait outside,' Peggy informed him, with a cruelty spoilt by bubbling mirth.

'Is that where we're to pick up the other passenger?' asked Arty.

'You talk as if everything was so very easy!' said Peggy rather indignantly.

'Being anywhere near a bank always has that effect on me,' he apologised.

'Now, one on each side—and be careful,' Peggy implored as the cab stopped in Cadogan Square. 'If anything happened now——!' Her tongue and her imagination failed.

'If you've got any money, you'll leave it there,' Miles prophesied, pointing at the Fricker door.

'Shall I?' cried Peggy in joyous defiance, as she sprang from the cab.

'Mayn't we even sit in the hall?' wailed Arty.

'Wait outside,' she commanded, with friendly curtness.

The door closed on her, the butler and footman showing her in with an air of satisfied expectancy.

'Who's to pay the cab?' exclaimed Arty, smitten with a sudden apprehension.

'Don't you remember being reviewed under the heading of "The Young Ravens"?' asked Miles, a little unkindly, but with a tranquil trust in the future.

That answer might not have satisfied the cabman. It closed the question for Arty Kane. They linked arms and walked up and down the square, discussing Shakespeare's habit of indulging in soliloquy. 'Which is bad art, but good business,' Miles pronounced. Of course Arty differed.

'The study, if you please, miss,' said the butler to Peggy Ryle. She followed him across the fawn-coloured mat which had once proved itself to possess such detective qualities.

Rooms change their aspects as much as faces; he who looks brings to each his own interpretation, and sees himself as much as that on which he gazes. The study was very different now to Peggy from what it had seemed on her previous entry. Very possibly Daniel experienced much the same variety of estimate touching the Lions' Den before he went in and after he came out.

Fricker appeared. He had lunched abstemiously, as was his wont, but daintily, as was Mrs. Fricker's business. He expected amusement; neither his heart nor his digestion was likely to be disturbed. An appeal for pity from Peggy Ryle's lips seemed to promise the maximum of enjoyment combined with the minimum of disturbance to business.

'So you've come back, Miss Ryle?' He gave her his lean, dry, strong hand.

'I told you I might,' she nodded, as she sat down in her old seat, opposite to his arm-chair.

'You've got the money?' His tone was one of easy pleasant mockery.

'It's no use trying to—to beat you down, I suppose?' asked Peggy, with an expression of exaggerated woe.

But he was too sharp for her. He did not fall into her artless trap. He was lighting his cigar, but he broke off the operation (it was not often that he had been known to do that), and leant across the table towards her.

'My God, child, have you got the money?' he asked her in a sort of excitement.

'Yes, yes, yes!' she broke out. Had not that fact been bottled up in her for hours? His question cut the wire. A metaphor derived from champagne is in no sort inappropriate.

'You've got it? Where have you got it from?'

'Your principle is not to ask that, Mr. Fricker.'

'He must be very fond of you.'

'You're utterly wrong—and rather vulgar,' said Peggy Ryle.

'On the table with it!' laughed Fricker.

She threw the little bag across the table. 'Oh, and have you a cigarette, Mr. Fricker?' she implored.

Fricker gave a short laugh, and pushed a silver box across to her. She leant back in an extraordinary perfection of pleasure.

'There are a lot of these notes,' he said. 'Are cheques out of fashion, Miss Ryle?'

'You're so suspicious,' she retorted. Apart from difficulties about a banking account, she would not have missed handling the notes for worlds.

He counted them carefully. 'Correct!' he pronounced.

'And here's your letter!' she cried, producing it from her pocket; the action was a veritable coup de thÉÂtre.

'Oh, I remember my letter,' he said with a smile—and a brow knit in vexation. Then he looked across the table at her. 'I'd have betted ten to one against it,' he remarked.

'You underrate the odds,' Peggy told him in a triumph that really invited Nemesis. 'I'd have betted a thousand to one when I left your house.'

'You're a wonderful girl,' said Fricker. 'How the devil did you do it?'

She grew sober for a moment. 'I'm ashamed of how I did it.' Then she burst out again victoriously: 'But I'd do it again, Mr. Fricker!'

'You have all the elements of greatness,' said he, with a gravity that was affected and yet did not seem entirely pretence. 'You've got three thousand five hundred pounds out of somebody——'

'I've got four thousand,' interrupted Peggy.

'But five hundred was——'

'That's not there! That's kept for me. That's the most splendid part of it all!' In that indeed seemed to her to lie the finest proof of victory. The rest might have been shame; that her five hundred lay intact meant change of heart. She had not pressed her five hundred on Airey Newton. There are times when everything should be taken, as there are when all should be given; her instinct had told her that.

Fricker smiled again; his deft fingers parted the notes into two uneven heaps. The fingers seemed to work of their own accord and to have eyes of their own, for his eyes did not leave Peggy Ryle's face.

'Is the man in love with you?' He could not help returning to that explanation.

'Not a farthing, if he had been!' cried Peggy.

'Then he's an old man, or a fool.'

'Why can't I be angry with you?' she cried in an amused despair. 'Are—are greed and—nonsense the only things you know?'

'Are you finding new words for love?' he asked with a sneer.

Peggy laughed. 'That's really not bad,' she admitted candidly. Under the circumstances she did not grudge Fricker a verbal victory. The poor man was badly beaten; let him have his gibe!

He had made his two heaps of notes—a larger and a smaller; his hand wavered undecidedly over them.

'I can trust you to do what you said you would?' she asked suddenly.

'No less—and no more. That's an essential part of my policy,' he assured her.

'And Mrs. Trevalla is free of Glowing Stars? And you'll tell her what you promised?'

'I'll take them over, with the liability. Yes, and I'll tell her.'

He spoke rather absently; his mind seemed to be on something else. When he spoke again, there was an odd—perhaps an unprecedented—embarrassment in his manner.

'I see my way to doing something with Glowing Stars. Money must go into it—the calls must be paid—but I think some of the money might come out again.' He looked at Peggy; he saw her gloriously triumphant eyes, her cheeks flushed with the intoxication of achievement. The impulse was on him to exalt her more. 'I should have done very well if I'd bargained with you for three thousand.'

'It would have seemed almost as impossible. And you wouldn't! You wanted more than market value for your pound of flesh!'

He pushed the smaller of the two heaps that he had made across to her with a swift motion of his hand; the hand trembled a little, but his voice was hard and dry.

'Take back the extra thousand and call it square, Miss Ryle,' said he.

Peggy laid down her cigarette and stared at the heap of notes he pushed across to her.

'What?' she exclaimed in the despair of blank astonishment; she could not grasp the idea.

'Take those back. I shall do very well with these.'

He took up his cigar again, and this time he lit it. To Peggy the room seemed to go round.

'Why do you do that?' she demanded.

'On my word, I don't know. Your infernal pluck, I think,' he said in a puzzled tone.

'I won't have it. It was a bargain.'

'It's not your money, you may remember.'

Peggy had forgotten that.

'It might be a pleasant surprise to—to your friend,' he went on. 'And, if you'll let me do it, it will, Miss Ryle, be rather a pleasant change to me.'

'Why do you do it?' she asked again.

He made her an odd answer—very odd, to come from him. 'Because of the look in your eyes, my dear.'

His tone was free from all offence now; he spoke as a father might. If his words surprised her to wonder, he had no better understanding of hers.

'You too, you too!' she whispered, and the eyes which had moved him grew misty.

'Come, don't refuse me,' he said. 'Take it back to your friend. He'll find a use for it.'

He seemed to touch a spring in her, to give her a cue.

'Yes, yes!' she assented eagerly. 'Perhaps there would be a use for it. Do you give it me? Freely, freely?'

'Freely,' answered Fricker. 'And all you want shall be said to Mrs. Trevalla.'

Peggy opened her bag and began to put the notes in; but she looked still at Fricker.

'Did you ever think of anything like this?' she asked in a new burst of confidence.

'No, I didn't,' he answered, with a brusque laugh.

'You like doing it?'

'Well, was there any compulsion, Miss Ryle?'

'I shall take it,' she said, 'and I thank you very much.'

'I should have been distressed if you hadn't taken it,' said he.

Peggy knew that he spoke truth, strange as the truth might be. She had an impulse to laugh, an impulse to cry. Fricker's quiet face quelled both in her.

'And that finishes our business, I suppose?' he asked.

'It's understood that you don't worry Trix any more?'

'Henceforward Mrs. Trevalla ceases to exist for me.' He was really quite in the same tale with Mrs. Bonfill and society at large.

His declaration seemed to amuse Peggy. 'Oh, well, that's putting it rather strongly, perhaps,' she murmured.

'Not a bit!' retorted Fricker, with his confident contemptuousness.

'You can never tell how you may run up against people,' remarked Peggy with a mature sagacity.

He leant back, looking at her. 'I've learnt to think that your observations have a meaning, Miss Ryle.'

'Yes,' Peggy confessed. 'But I don't exactly know——' She frowned a moment, and then smiled with the brightness of a new idea. 'Where's your daughter, Mr. Fricker?'

'Connie's in her room.' He did not add that, by way of keeping vivid the memory of moral lessons, he had sent her there on Peggy's arrival.

'Do you think she'd give me a cup of tea?'

It was rather early for tea. 'Well, I daresay she would,' smiled Fricker. 'I shall hear what's up afterwards?'

'Yes, I'm sure you will,' promised Peggy.

He sent her under escort to the drawing-room, and directed that Connie should be told to join her. Then he returned to his study and began the letter which he had to write to Trix Trevalla. He fulfilled his obligation loyally, although he had no pity for Trix, and was sorely tempted to give her a dig or two. He resisted this temptation when he remembered that to do what he said he would was an essential part of his policy, and that, if he failed in it, Peggy Ryle would come again and want to know the meaning of it; at which thought he raised his brows and smiled in an amused puzzle. So he told Trix that Glowing Stars gave promise of a new development, and, though he could not offer her any price for her shares, he would take them off her hands for a nominal consideration, and hold her free from the liability. 'Thus,' he ended, 'closing all accounts between us.'

'She was a fool, and my wife was a fool, and I suppose I was a fool too,' he mused. A broader view came to his comfort. 'A man's got to be a bit of a fool in some things if he wants to live comfortably at home,' he reflected. He could not expect the weaker sex (such undoubtedly would have been his description) to rise to the pure heights where he dwelt, where success in business was its own reward and the victorious play of brains triumph enough. 'But anyhow we backed the wrong horse in Trix Trevalla,' he had to acknowledge finally.

Before he had sealed the letter, Connie burst into the room. Fricker prepared to say something severe—these unlicensed intrusions were a sore offence. But the sight of his daughter stopped him. She was dressed in the height of smartness; she had her hat on and was buttoning her gloves; her cheeks were red, and excitement shone in her eyes. On the whole it looked as though she were clearing the decks for action.

'I'm going back to tea with Miss Ryle,' she announced.

He rose, and stood with his back to the fireplace.

'Well, she's a very nice friend for you to have, Connie.' There was a flavour of mockery in his tone.

'You know as well as I do that there's no question of that. But Mrs. Trevalla's living with her now.'

'I thought your mother and you had agreed to drop Mrs. Trevalla?'

Connie was not in the mood to notice or to trouble about his subtly malicious sarcasms.

'I asked Beaufort Chance to come here to-day,' she went on, 'and he told me he had to be in the City all the afternoon.'

'Aren't these things in your mother's department, Connie?'

'No, in yours. I want you to back me up. He's going to tea at four o'clock at Miss Ryle's—to meet Mrs. Trevalla.'

'Miss Ryle told you that? And she wants you to go with her?'

'Yes. You see what it means?'

'Why, Connie, you're looking quite dangerous.'

'I'm going with her,' Connie announced, finishing off the last glove-button viciously. 'At least I am if you'll back me up.'

'How?' he asked. He was amused at her in this mood, and rather admired her too.

'Well, first, you must see me through with mamma, if—if anything comes out about what's been happening. You know Beaufort wouldn't stick at giving me away if he wanted to get even with me.'

'You're probably right as to that,' agreed Fricker, licking his cigar.

'So you must tell mamma that it had your approval, and not let her be nasty to me. You can manage that, if you like, you know.'

'I daresay, I daresay. Is there any other diversion for your idle old father?'

'Yes. You must back me up with Beaufort. I believe he's dangling after Mrs. Trevalla again.' Connie's eyes flashed with threatenings of wrath.

'On the quiet?'

Connie nodded emphatically.

'Hardly the square thing,' said Fricker, smiling in an abused patience.

'Are you going to stand it? He's made fierce love to me.'

'Yes, I know something about that, Connie. And you're fond of him, eh?'

'Yes, I am,' she declared defiantly. 'And I won't let that woman take him away from me.'

'What makes you think she'd have him?'

'Oh, she'd have him! But I don't mean her to get the chance.'

Fricker liked spirit of all sorts; if he had approved of Peggy's, he approved of his daughter's too. Moreover his great principle was at stake once more, and must be vindicated again; he must insist on fair play. If what Connie attributed to Beaufort Chance were true, it was by no means fair play. His mind briefly reviewed how he stood towards Beaufort; the answer was that Beaufort hung on him, and could not stand alone. He had the gift of seeing just how people were situated; he saw it better than they did themselves, thanks to his rapid intuition and comprehensive grasp of business affairs. He had set Beaufort Chance on horseback—financial horseback; if he willed, he could pull him down again; at the least he could make his seat most uncomfortable and precarious.

'We should be able to manage him between us, should we, after the event as well as before?'

'You help me to manage him before—I'll manage him myself afterwards,' said Connie.

'Good girl! Say what you like. I'll back you up. Bring him to me, if need be.'

Connie darted at him and kissed him. 'Don't say anything before Miss Ryle,' she whispered. 'It's just that I'm going out to tea.'

When they reached the hall, where Peggy was waiting in triumphant composure, Connie Fricker lived up to the spirit of this caution by discarding entirely her aggressive plainness of speech and her combative air. She minced with excessive gentility as she told Miss Ryle that she was ready to go with her; then she flew off to get a gold-headed parasol. Peggy sat and smiled at Mr. Fricker.

'She's going to have tea with you?' asked Fricker.

'Isn't it kind of her?' beamed Peggy.

Fricker respected diplomacy. 'The kindness is on your side,' he replied politely; but his smile told Peggy all the truth. She gave a laugh of amusement mingled with impatient anticipation.

Connie came running back. 'You'll tell mamma where I've gone, won't you?' she asked, her eyes reminding her father of one-half of his duty. 'Oh, and possibly Mr. Chance will be here at dinner.' She managed to recall the other half.

Fricker nodded; Peggy rose with an admirable unconsciousness.

'Hold your bag tight, Miss Ryle,' Fricker advised, with a gleam in his eye as he shook hands.

'That's all right. I'm well looked after,' said Peggy, as the servant opened the door.

Two hansoms were waiting; in each sat a young man smoking a cigarette. At the sight of Peggy they leapt out; at the sight of the gorgeous young woman who accompanied Peggy they exchanged one swift glance and threw away the cigarettes. Introductions were made, Fricker standing and looking on, the butler peering over Fricker's shoulder.

'What time is it?' inquired Peggy.

'Quarter to four,' said Arty Kane.

'Oh, we must be quick, or—or tea'll be cold!' She turned to Miles Childwick. 'Will you go with Miss Fricker, Miles? Arty, take me. Come along. Good-bye, Mr. Fricker.'

She kissed her hand to Fricker and jumped in; Arty followed. Miles, with a queer look of fright on his face, lifted his hat and indicated the remaining hansom.

'It's rather unconventional, isn't it?' giggled Connie, gathering her skirts carefully away from the wheel.

'Allow me,' begged Miles in a sepulchrally grave tone.

He saw her in without damage, raised his hat again to Fricker, got in, and sat down well on the other side of the cab. He was of opinion that Peggy had let him in shamefully.

'I hope it's a quiet horse, or I shall scream,' said Connie.

'I hope it is,' agreed Miles most heartily. What his part would be if she screamed he dared not think; he said afterwards that the colours of her garments did quite enough screaming on their own account.

Fricker watched them drive off and then returned to his study thoughtfully. But he was not engrossed in problems of finance, in the possibilities of Glowing Stars and of minimising the claims they would make. He was not even thinking of the odd way things had turned out in regard to Trix Trevalla, nor of how he had pledged himself to deal with Beaufort Chance. The only overt outcome of his meditations was the remark, addressed once again to his study walls:—

'I'm not sure that Connie isn't a bit too lively in her dress.'

The various influences which produced this illuminating doubt it would be tedious to consider. And the doubt had no practical result. He did not venture so much as to mention it to Connie or to Mrs. Fricker.