r 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--_tete-a-tete_, 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--t