he gone?" she asked in a whisper.

"Yes." Peg sat down beside the bed. "Here, have you two been and had a
real row?" she demanded.

"Yes," Faith whispered.

Peg said "Humph! You mean a proper old glory-row like they have in
novelettes, eh? Don't mean to make it up till the last chapter, if ever,
eh?"

"I never mean to make it up."

There was a little silence; then Peg said:

"With all his money, it might be worth while."

Faith hid her face.

"I don't want his money. I only want my mother," she sobbed.

"You poor chicken!" Peg took her into motherly arms.

"You shan't ever see him again if you don't want," she promised rashly.
"He shan't come in here except over my dead body," she added, with
tragic emphasis, and a sudden memory of a pink-backed novelette still
lying at home unfinished....

But she found the Beggar Man more difficult to manage than she had
imagined. He demanded to see Faith, and being determinedly repulsed,
asked reasons.

Peg hesitated; then she said with evident enjoyment:

"Well, you'll have to know in the end, so I may as well tell you now!
She's found out something about you."

Forrester changed colour a little.

"What the deuce do you mean?" he demanded.

Peg shrugged her shoulders.

"I only mean that she told me so last night. Of course, she's sick and
ill, and everything looks its blackest, and I told her she was making
too much of it, but she wouldn't listen! I'm not sensitive myself, but
she seems to think you're responsible for her father's death. Her father
was a gentleman, you know," she added in emphatic parenthesis.

The Beggar Man laughed.

"I never knew her father. I never saw him in my life to the best of my
knowledge."

Peg regarded him with her handsome head on one side, and her arms
akimbo.

"Have you ever read a book called 'Revenge is Sweet'?" she asked.

The Beggar Man moved impatiently.

"No, I haven't, and even if I had----"

She interrupted mercilessly.

"Well, you should! It's on at the pictures, too, this week, and it
reminds me of what Faith told me about her father and you! It's all
about a man who ruined another man in business and broke his heart, so
that he died! Well, that's what happened to Faith's father--through
you!"

The Beggar Man walked over to the window and stood looking out into the
ugly street.

A dull flush had risen to his face. He was not proud of everything that
had happened in his life, and he was perfectly well awa