er times when she
shrank from the very thought of him, and only wished to be able to
forget those few days of delirium.

She would not even confide in Peg. All she would do was to beg her to
ask no questions.

"It's all over and done with," she said tremblingly. "You said he would
not come back. I hope he never will."

"I said I should not be at all surprised if he didn't," Peg answered.
"But, of course, he may do. Sometimes in novelettes the villain of the
story turns out to be the hero after all, you know."

Faith did not think it was at all likely in this case, and the days
began slowly to creep away.

When a fortnight had gone and the seventeenth day drew near, panic
closed about her heart. Supposing he came after all?

She had had no word from him, and she hardly knew whether to be glad or
sorry. Perhaps it meant that he never would come back. She wished she
could believe this.

At other times, lying awake at night in her little room with its sloping
roof, against her will she was forced to remember every word the Beggar
Man had said to her, every kindly action that he had done, and there was
always a great unanswered question in her mind.

"Why did he marry me if he was bad, as they say he is? He need not have
married me. There are heaps of other girls in the world."

Mr. Shawyer wrote and begged her to go and see him, but she neither went
nor answered the letter.

She spent as much of her time with Peg as possible, and the elder girl
once more resumed her role of friend and protector.

"If you're worrying about that good-for-nothing!" she said to Faith one
day in her blunt manner, "you're a little fool. There are as good fish
in the sea as any that were caught, my girl, and don't you make any
mistake. Let old Scammel stay in America. Jolly good riddance, I say!"

Faith did not answer, but her nerves were tearing her to pieces. Every
time a man's voice sounded in the passages of the factory or a door
opened suddenly she was sure it was the Beggar Man come back to find and
claim her. Every time she heard the sound of a motor coming up the
street her heart beat so fast she could hardly breathe. She never knew
how she dragged through the seventeenth day, but it passed somehow, and
the eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth, and still there was no sign
of Nicholas Forrester.

She began to pluck up courage. He would not come now, she was sure. If
he had returned to England he had found her wedding ring