Of that drive with Connie Fricker Miles Childwick had, in the after-time, many tales to tell. Truth might claim the inspiration, an artistic intellect perfected them. 'She said things to which no gentleman should listen in a hansom cab, but the things she said were nothing to the things she looked as if she was going to say. In a hansom! No screen between you and a scrutinising public, Mrs. John!' That was the first stage. In the second he had invented for poor Connie all the sayings which he declared her expression to suggest. Whatever the exact facts, while he forgave Peggy Ryle everything else, he did not cease to harbour malice on account of that ride. Connie thought him nice, but rather slow. His must be the blame, since it is agreed that in such cases the man should adapt himself.

The work of the bodyguard was done; it was disbanded with a gracious invitation to supper. Peggy flew up the stairs ahead of her guest. There was a great question to be solved.

'The gentleman has come, miss,' said the charwoman.

'And Mrs. Trevalla?'

'I told him Mrs. Trevalla would be in directly.'

'And where is she?'

'She's still in her room, I think, miss.'

Peggy turned triumphant eyes on her companion. 'Now then, Miss Fricker!' said she. 'That's the door! I shall go and keep Trix quiet. That's the door!' She pointed encouragingly, if rather imperiously, to the sitting-room.

'I'm not afraid,' laughed Connie, putting her hat straight and giving a rattle to her bangles. But there was a ring of agitation in her voice, and in her heart she half-regretted the dismissal of the bodyguard. Still, she had pluck.

She swept in with the sustaining consciousness of a highly dramatic entrance. To come in well is often half the battle.

'You here! The devil!' exclaimed Beaufort Chance.

'Mr. Chance! Well, I declare!' said Connie. 'And alone too!' She looked round suspiciously, as though Trix might perhaps be under the table. 'Well, I suppose Miss Ryle won't be long taking off her things.'

Beaufort already suspected a plot, but, his first surprise over, he would not plead guilty to being an object that invited one.

'I got away earlier than I expected,' he told her, 'and looked in here on my way to Cadogan Square. There was no chance of finding you at home so early.'

'And there was a chance of finding Mrs. Trevalla?' She sat down opposite him, showing her teeth in a mocking smile. His confusion and the weakness of his plea set her courage firmly on its feet.

'I don't know whether there was or not. She's not here, you see.'

'Oh, I'll amuse you till she comes!'

'I sha'n't wait for her long.'

'I sha'n't stay long either. You can drive me back home, can't you?'

He was pitifully caught, and had not the adroitness to hide his sense of it. Perhaps he had been cruelly used. When he had written to Trix, saying he meant to come again and asking for a date, it was hardly fair of Peggy, performing the office of amanuensis for Trix, to say that Mrs. Trevalla saw few visitors, but that this particular day (on which Peggy was to visit Fricker) would be the best chance of seeing her. Such language might be non-committal; it was undoubtedly misleading. He had found in it a sign that Trix was yielding, coming to a sensible frame of mind, recognising what seemed to him so obvious—the power he had over her and her attraction towards him. In his heart he believed that he held both these women, Trix and Connie, in his hand, and could do as he liked with them; thus he would cajole and conciliate Connie (he thought kisses would not lose their efficacy, nor that despotic air either) while he made Trix his own—for towards her lay his stronger inclination. To secure her would be his victory over all the sneerers, over Mervyn, and—the greatest came last—over herself. But, however clever we are, there is a point at which things may fall out too perversely. If Connie came by chance, this acme of bad luck was reached; if by design, then he had miscalculated somewhere.

'You're not greeting me very enthusiastically,' remarked Connie. 'You don't sit stock-still and say you won't stay long when I come to you in the drawing-room at home!'

'Nonsense! That girl may be in here any minute.'

'Well, and mamma might come in any minute at home—which would be much worse. After all, what would she matter? You're not ashamed of me, I suppose?'

Assumption is a valuable device in argument; Connie was using it skilfully. She assumed that she was first in his thoughts, and did not charge him with preferring another; let him explain that—if he dared.

'Nonsense!' he repeated fretfully. 'But I can't play the fool now. I've come to see Mrs. Trevalla on business. 'Isn't there another room?'

'No; and I thought papa did all the business there was with Mrs. Trevalla.'

He had sat down near the table; she came and perched herself on it. Intimidation must probably be the main weapon, but she was alive to the importance of reinforcing it.

'He thinks he does,' she went on significantly.

'Oh, it's a small matter. It won't do him any harm. And I'm a free agent, I suppose?'

'You're free enough anyhow, pretty often,' Connie admitted.

'You've never objected,' he snarled, his temper getting out of hand.

'Well, no. I knew I had to do with a gentleman.'

Kisses might be out of place, even dangerous in view of a possible interruption; but there was the despotic air. Now seemed the minute for it.

'Don't you talk nonsense, child,' he said. 'If I've treated you kindly, it doesn't entitle you to take that tone. And get off that table.'

'I'm very comfortable here,' remarked Connie.

'It doesn't look respectable.'

'What, not with you and me? There's nobody here, is there?'

'Stop playing the fool,' he commanded brusquely. 'What's the matter with you to-day?'

'I'm in ripping spirits to-day, Beaufort. Can't you guess why?'

'I don't believe you came here to see Peggy Ryle at all,' he broke out.

'Never mind why I came here.'

'Have you got an idea that you've done something clever?'

'Never mind. I've awfully good news, Beaufort.'

'They may be listening at the door.' His uneasiness was pitiful.

'It wouldn't matter. Everybody'll know soon,' said Connie consolingly.

'What the deuce are you talking about?' he growled.

She bent forward towards him with a striking, if rather overdone, air of joyous confusion.

'I've spoken to papa, Beaufort,' she whispered.

Startled out of pretence, he sprang to his feet with an oath. His look was very ugly, he glared threateningly. Connie braced her courage and did not quail.

'I know I ought to have asked you,' she admitted with a smile that belied her professed penitence, 'but I caught him in such a beautiful humour that I had to take advantage of it. So I told him everything. I just confessed everything, Beaufort! Of course he scolded me—it hasn't been quite right, has it?—but he was very kind. He said that, since we were engaged, he'd forgive me and make mamma forgive me too.' She paused before her climax. 'I think that he's really simply awfully pleased.'

'You've told your father that you're engaged to me? You know it's a damned lie.'

Connie's eyes gleamed dangerously, but she kept admirably cool.

'Well, I told him that you'd said you loved me, and that you always kissed me when we were alone, and called me your little Connie, and so on, you know. And papa said that he presumed from all that that we were engaged.'

'Well?' he muttered savagely.

'And I said that of course I presumed so too.'

It was spoken with the innocence of the dove, but it put Beaufort Chance in a very awkward position; the reference is not to his sensibilities but to his tactics. Connie's dexterity forced him to a broad alternative—submission or open war. She deprived him of any half-way house, any compromise by which cajolery and kisses would serve in place of a promise and an obligation. She did not leave the matter there; she jumped down from the table and put her arm on his shoulder—indeed, half-way round his neck. 'You must have meant me to; and it made me so happy to—to feel that I was yours, Beaufort.'

To this pass his shifty dealings had brought him, even as in public affairs they had forbidden him a career, and in business had condemned him to a sort of outlawry, although an outlawry tempered by riches. He was in an extremity; his chance of Trix was at stake, his dominion over Connie herself was challenged. He saw the broad alternative, and he chose open war.

'It's all a very pretty trick of yours, my dear,' he sneered throwing her arm off him none too gently; 'but a man doesn't marry every girl he kisses, especially not when she's so ready to be kissed as some people we know. You can explain it to your father any way you like, but you're not going to bluff me.'

'I see why you came here now,' said Connie coolly. 'You came to make love to Trix Trevalla. Well, you can't, that's all.'

'That's for Mrs. Trevalla to say, not for you.'

'I don't expect Mrs. Trevalla'll show up at all,' remarked Connie, leaning against the table again.

'That's the little plan, is it?' He gave a jerk of his head. 'By Jove, I see! That hussy of a Ryle girl's in it!'

'I don't know who's in it; you seem rather out of it,' smiled Connie.

'I am, am I? We'll see. So Mrs. Trevalla won't show, won't she? That's hardly final, is it? She's on the premises, I rather fancy.'

'Going to force your way into her bedroom? Oh, Beaufort!'

'You'd be mightily shocked, wouldn't you?' He moved towards the door; his purpose was only half-formed, but he wished her to think it was absolute.

'I don't mind; but I'm sure papa and mamma would. I don't think they'd like you for a son-in-law after that.'

'Then we should all be pleased.'

'Or perhaps for a partner either.'

He turned round sharply, and came back a step or two towards her.

'What do you mean by that?' he asked slowly.

'I don't suppose papa would care to have anything to do with a man who trifled with his daughter's affections.' Connie stuck loyally to the old phrases.

He was full in front of her now and looking hard at her.

'You little devil! I believe you've squared him,' said he.

Connie, well on the table again, put her arms akimbo, stuck her legs out in front of her straight from the knee, and laughed in his face.

'If you're going into Mrs. Trevalla's room, you might ask her if, from her experience, she thinks it wise to quarrel with papa.'

'I'm not a woman and a fool.'

'Oh, you know your own business best, Beaufort!'

It was sorely against the grain, but he shirked his open war; he tried coaxing.

'Come, be reasonable, Connie. You're a sensible girl. I mean all that's square, but——'

'I mean that if you wait here after I've gone, or go now and see Trix Trevalla, I'll never speak to you again. And papa—— Well, as I say, you know your own business best about that.'

Her cool certainty, her concentration on one purpose, gave her all the advantage over him with his divided counsels, his inconsistent desires, his efforts to hedge. Again she pinned him to a choice.

'What do you want?' he asked curtly.

'I want you to take me home to Cadogan Square.' That was hard and business-like, and bore for him all the significance that she meant to put into it. Then her voice grew lower and her large eyes turned on him with a different expression. 'We can have a really friendly talk about it there.' She meant to beat him, but she was highly content to soften the submission by all means in her power. She would not hesitate about begging his forgiveness, provided the spoils of victory were hers—in the fashion of some turbulent vassal after defying his feeble overlord.

Beaufort read it all well enough. He saw that she liked him and was ready to be pleasant: his dream of mastery vanished from before his eyes. He might have broken Trix Trevalla's proud but sensitive spirit; Miss Connie's pliant pride and unpliant purposes were quite different things to deal with. He knew that in effect, whatever the forms were, he submitted if he took her to Cadogan Square. Henceforward his lot was with the Frickers—and not as their master either.

The truth came home to him with cutting bitterness. He had been able to say to himself that he might use Fricker, but that he was very different from Fricker; that he flirted with Connie, but that his wife would have to be very different from her. He had to give up, too, all thought of Trix Trevalla. Or he must face the alternative and be at war with Fricker. Had he the courage? Had he the strength? He stood looking gloomily at Connie.

'You're a fool, Beaufort,' she told him plainly, with a glittering smile. 'I'm sure you seemed fond enough of me. Why shouldn't we be very jolly? You think I'm nasty now, but I'm not generally, am I?' She coaxed him with the look that she would have said was her most 'fetching.' To do her justice, a more expressive word for the particular variety of glance is hard to find.

At this moment Peggy Ryle came out of Trix's room (where she had beguiled the time in idle conversation), shut the door carefully behind her, crossed the passage, and entered the sitting-room. The time Connie had estimated as sufficient for the interview had elapsed.

'Oh, Mr. Chance, I'm sorry! Trix has such a headache that she can't come in. She has tried, but standing up or moving——' Peggy threw out her hands in an expressive gesture. 'That's what kept me,' she added apologetically to Connie. 'I hope you've amused one another all this time?'

The plot was plain now; the bulk of Beaufort's resentment turned on Peggy. What was the use of that? Peggy had no fear of him. She was radiantly invulnerable.

'I'm sorry she's so seedy.' He hesitated; he longed to see Trix, even if it were no more than to see her and to give her a parting blow. 'Perhaps you'll let me send a note in, to say what my business is? It's pressing, and she might make an effort to see me for——'

'I'm afraid I must go,' Connie interrupted. 'I promised to be home.'

'Must you really? I suppose the cab's waiting.'

'You mustn't bother poor Mrs. Trevalla with business now, must he, Miss Ryle? It must wait for another day. You were coming to Cadogan Square, weren't you? I'll take you with me.'

He looked from one to the other. Never was man in a more hopeless corner. Nothing would have pleased him so much as to knock their heads together. Connie was imitating Peggy's external unconsciousness of anything remarkable in the situation as well as she could.

'We mustn't stay. Mrs. Trevalla must want you,' pursued Connie.

'Oh, I can leave her for just a few minutes,' Peggy assured her, with an anxious look at the clock.

'Good-bye, Miss Ryle,' said Connie, giving Peggy's hand a hearty squeeze. She passed on towards the door and opened it. Holding it ajar, she looked round and waited for Beaufort Chance. For an instant he stood where he was. The idea of rebellion was still in him. But his spirit failed. He came up to Peggy and sullenly bade her farewell.

'Good-bye,' said Peggy in a low voice. Its tone struck him as odd; when he looked in her eyes he saw a touch of compassion. It flashed across him that she understood what he was feeling, that she saw how his acts had brought him lower than his nature need have been brought—or at least that she was sorry that this fate, and nothing less than this, must be held to be justice.

'Good-bye, Miss Ryle. My regrets to Mrs. Trevalla. I hope for another opportunity. Now I'm ready, Miss Fricker, and most delighted to have the chance.'

At all times let the proprieties be sacred!

That is, let them be observed in the presence of third parties—especially if those parties have brought us to humiliation. They are not so exacting in a vehicle that holds only two.

'Your turn to-day; mine some other day, Connie,' said Beaufort Chance, as he sullenly settled himself in the cab.

'Oh, don't talk bosh, and don't sulk. You've found out that I'm not a fool. Is there any harm in that?' She turned to him briskly. 'There are just two ways of taking this,' she told him. 'One is to be bullied into it by papa. The other is to do it pleasantly. Since there's no way not to do it, which of those two do you think best?'

'Did you mean it all the time?' he asked, sullen still, but curious.

'As soon as I began to be really gone on you,' she answered him. The phrase is not classical, but she used it, and used it with a very clear purpose. 'You don't suppose I like being—being disagreeable, and seeming to have—to have to force you to what you'd always let me understand you wanted? A girl has some self-respect, Beaufort.'

'Some girls have got a deuced good set of brains, anyhow,' he said, feeling for her some of the admiration that her father's clear purposes and resolute pursuit of them always claimed for him.

'Do you suppose' (Connie's face looked out of the other side of the cab) 'that if I hadn't been awfully fond of you——?'

He believed her, which was not strange; what she said was near enough to the truth to be rather strange. Yet it was not incongruous in her. And she seized a good moment for confessing it. If he would choose the pleasant way of accepting the inevitable, it should be made very pleasant to him. Nor was she indifferent as to which way he chose. She had her father in reserve, and would invoke his help if need be; but she hated to think of his smile while he gave it. Suddenly, under the board of the cab, she put her hand into Beaufort Chance's and gave his a squeeze.

He surrendered; but he kept up a little bit of pretence to the last. Connie let him keep it up, and humoured him in it.

'All right. But I'll tell you what I think of your little game when we're alone together!'

'Oh, I say, you frighten me!' cried Connie tactfully. 'You won't be cruel, will you, Beaufort dear?'

She would have made an excellent Mayor of the Palace to a blustering but easily managed king.

He had chosen the pleasant way, and verily all things were made pleasant to him. Mrs. Fricker was archly maternal. A mother's greeting for him, an indulgent mother's forgiveness for Connie's secrecy. No more than a ponderously playful 'Naughty child!' redeemed in an instant by 'But we could always trust her!' Not thus always Mrs. Fricker towards Connie and her diversions, as Connie's anxiety in the past well testified. But there, an engagement in the end does make a difference—if it is a desirable one. It would seem dangerous to divorce morality and prudence, since the apostles of each have ever been supremely anxious to prove that it coincided with, if it did not even include, the other; let us hope that they seek rather to excuse their opponents than to fortify themselves.

Fricker too was benevolent; he hinted at millions; he gave Beaufort to understand that while a partner or associate was one thing, a member of the family would be quite another; crumbs from the rich man's table compared with 'All that I have is thine' was about the difference. It is true that Fricker smiled here and there, and just at first had seemed to telegraph something to his daughter's wide-awake eyes, and to receive a reply that increased his cordiality. What of that? Who cares for a whip if it be left hanging on the peg? It is at worst a hint which any wise and well-bred slave will notice, but ignore. Not a reminder of it came from Fricker, unless in a certain far-away reflectiveness of smile. He had spent an hour that day in the task of finding out how entirely he held Beaufort in the hollow of his hand. The time was not wasted—besides, it was a recreation. But he did not wish to have to shut his fist and squeeze; he preferred at all times that things should go pleasantly, and his favourite moral lessons be inculcated by the mild uses of persuasion. 'Now you're one of us,' he told Beaufort, grasping his hand. Well, possibly he glanced at the whip out of the corner of his eye when he was saying that.

And Connie herself? She was the finest diplomatist of the three, for her heart was in the work. So much falsehood comes from no cause as from labelling human folk with a single ticket; a bundle of them might have been adequate to Connie. The time came which Beaufort had threatened—when they were alone as an affianced pair. The thing was done; she had spared no roughness in doing it. Now she set herself to make him content; nor did she force him to retract his threats. Her own mind was divided as to their relations When it came to the point of a clash of wills (to use a phrase consecrated by criticism), she found always that she wished her's to prevail; in lighter questions she was primitive enough to cherish the ideal of herself as a willing slave. If Beaufort had not been able to raise that illusion in her from time to time, she would not have liked him so much, nor gone to such lengths to prove her own ultimate mastery. Almost persuading herself, she almost persuaded him; and in this effort she became pleasant to him again. Thus she compromised between her woman's temperament and her masculine will. If he would accept the compromise as a permanent basis, their union promised to go very smoothly.

'If you'd been like this,' he told her, 'there wouldn't have been any trouble this afternoon.'

She endorsed the monstrous falsehood readily.

'No, it was all my fault. But I was—so terrified of losing you.'

'You tried to threaten me into it!'

He could not be so deluded as to doubt what she had done. But he wanted the forlorn comfort of a brave face over a beaten heart.

'You threatened me too,' whispered Connie.

She broke away from him and took up her old jaunty attitude—arm on the mantel-piece, foot on the fender—again: there was challenge in the eyes that met his boldly.

'You did want some persuading,' she reminded him.

He laughed. 'Well, Trix Trevalla's a devilish pretty woman—and a bit easier to hold than you.'

'I'm easy enough, if your hand's light. As for her, she'd have worried you to death. She'd have hated you, Beaufort.'

He did not like that, and showed it.

'And I—don't!' Connie went on with a dazzling smile. 'Well, you're staring at me. How do I look?'

So she played her fish, with just enough hint of her power, with just enough submission to the legitimate sway she invited him to exercise. It was all very dexterous; there was probably no other road to her end. If it seems in some ways not attractive—well, we must use the weapons we have or be content to go to the wall. When she bade him good-night—still Mrs. Fricker was strong on reputable hours, and Connie herself assumed a new touch of scrupulousness (she was a free lance no more)—his embrace did not lack ardour. She disengaged herself from his arms with a victorious laugh.

Her mother waited for her, vigilant but approving—just a little anxious too.

'Well, Connie, is he very happy?'

'It's all right, mamma.' Her assurance was jovially impudent. 'I can do just what I like with him!'

'You'll have a job sometimes,' opined Mrs. Fricker.

'That's half the fun.' She thought a moment, and then spoke with a startling candour—with an unceremoniousness which Mrs. Fricker would have reproved twenty-four hours earlier. 'I'm very fond of him,' she said, 'but Beaufort's a funk in the end, you know.' She swung herself off to bed, singing a song. Her title to triumph is not to be denied. Peggy Ryle had furnished the opportunity, but the use of it had been all her own. A natural exultation may excuse the exclamation with which she jumped into bed:

'I knew Mrs. Trevalla wouldn't be in it if I got a fair show!'

Beaufort Chance stayed a while alone in the drawing-room before he went down to join Fricker over a cigar. He had enjoyed Connie's company that night; the truth stood out undeniable. She had made him forget what her company meant and would cost—nay, more, what it would bring him in worldly gain. She had made him forget, or cease to wish for, Trix Trevalla. She had banished the thought of what he had been and once had hoped to be. If she could do that for him, would he be unhappy? For a moment he almost prayed to be always unhappy in the thing which he was now set to do. For after an hour of blindness there came, as often, an hour of illumination almost unnatural. In the light of it he saw one of the worst things that a man can see. Enough of his old self and of his old traditions remained to make his eyes capable of the vision. He knew that the worst in him had been pleased; he saw that to please the worst in him threatened now to become enough. His record was not very good, but had he deserved this? It is useless to impugn the way of things. The knowledge came to him that, as he had more and more sought the low and not the high, so more and more the low had become sufficient to him. The knowledge was very bitter; but with a startled horror he anticipated the time when he would lose it. He had lost so much—public honour, private scruples, delicacy of taste. He had set out with at least a respect for these things and with that share in them which the manner of his life and the standard of his associates imparted to him. They were all gone. He was degraded. He knew that now, and he feared that even the consciousness of it would soon die.

There was no help for it. In such cases there is none, unless a man will forsake all and go naked into the wilderness. To such a violent remedy he was unequal. It did not need Fricker's smooth assumption that all was settled to tell him that all was settled indeed. It did not need Fricker's welcome to the bosom of the family to tell him that of that family he would now be. Fricker's eulogy of his daughter was unnecessary, since soon to Beaufort too she would seem a meet subject for unstinted praise.

Yet Fricker did not lack some insight into his thoughts.

'I daresay, old fellow,' he remarked, warming his back before the fire—which he liked at nights, whatever the season of the year—'that this isn't quite what you expected when you began life, but, depend upon it, it's very good business. After all, we very few of us get what we think we shall when we set up in the thing. Here am I—and, by Jove, I started life secretary to a Diocesan Benevolent Fund, and wanting to marry the Archdeacon's daughter! Here are you—well, we know all about you, Beaufort, my boy! Old Mervyn hasn't quite done the course he set out to do. Where's our friend Mrs. Trevalla? What's going to happen to pretty Peggy Ryle?' He dropped his coat-tails and shrugged his shoulders. 'Between you and me, and not for the ladies, we take what we can get and try to be thankful. It's a queer business, but you haven't drawn such a bad ticket after all.'

Beaufort Chance took a long pull of whisky-and-soda. The last idea of violent rebellion was gone. Under the easy tones, the comfortably pessimistic doctrine (there is much and peculiar comfort in doctrine of that colour), proceeding from the suave and well-warmed preacher on the hearthrug, there lay a polite intimation of the inevitable. If Fate and the Frickers seemed to mingle and become indistinct in conception, why, so they did in fact. Whose was the whip on the peg—Fate's or Fricker's? And who gives either Fate or Frickers power? Whatever the answer to these questions, Beaufort Chance had no mind that the whip should be taken down.

'I've nothing to complain of,' said he, and drank again.

Fricker watched the gulps with a fatherly smile.