g he really did like Peg? Supposing he more than liked her? She
was handsome enough to take any man's fancy, and Faith knew how badly
Forrester had suffered over the disappointment of his marriage.

A hundred little incidents came crowding back to her mind, cruelly
magnified. The way he invariably chose to talk to Peg in preference to
herself. The way he had elected to sit with her at the back of the car
that afternoon, though she had offered to change places. The way he had
overruled her objections with regard to Peg's gaudy choice of decoration
when first they came to the house.

"What does it matter if it pleases her?" he had said, in his careless
way. "I like to see her happy."

She had thought nothing of it at the time, but it seemed a great matter
now. And at the memory of Peg's crude accusation the blood rushed
stingingly to Faith's pale cheeks.

"I'm not jealous! How dare she say so? I hate her--I hate her!"

She spoke the words in a whisper through the silent room and the bitter
sound of them frightened her.

Hate Peg! Oh, no, she did not mean that. Peg had been a good friend to
her--Peg had never failed.

Faith tried hard to recover her composure and look at things more
sensibly.

After all, what had happened? Little enough, she knew, but she could not
forget the picture Peg had made during those moments on the landing or
the look of admiration in the Beggar Man's eyes.

She had felt herself colourless and insignificant beside Peg, and her
soul writhed as she recalled the mocking, nervous words that the elder
girl had spoken.

"It's like a bit out of a novelette, isn't it?... Heroine opens her door
and finds her best friend talking to her husband, _tete-a-tete_, as it
were."

Though she knew that Peg had meant no harm, and though she had heard
her say similar things scores of times before, to-night somehow the
words grated deeply on Faith's sensitiveness.

It was as if someone had held up a scorching light in front of her
friend, showing just how rough and unrefined she really was and could
be.

Faith remembered how, not so long ago, Forrester had told her that he
wished her friendship with Peg to cease. Did he wish it still?

She lay awake for hours, turning things over in her mind, torturing
herself with doubts and perplexities.

It was not that she cared for him at all, so she told herself again and
again. It was just that it was so horrible to think that perhaps he and
Peg ... and then