Part 28 (1/2)

When Peg went to Faith's room that night for their usual gossip, she found the door locked against her.

She rattled the handle impatiently and called:

”Faith!”

There was no answer, and she rapped on the panel, a vague feeling of surprise in her heart.

”Faith! It's only me--let me in.”

There was an answer then.

”I've gone to bed--I'm tired.”

”Tired!” Peg echoed the word with disdainful incredulity. She did not see how Faith could be tired after a day of such ease. She herself was as fresh and wide awake as a lark.

”You can't be tired,” she said emphatically, and rattled the handle once more. ”Faith, let me come in. Does your head ache?”

”Of course not, but I want to go to sleep. Good-night.”

There was such finality in the voice that the colour rose to Peg's handsome face. It was the first time she had ever been shut out from Faith's confidence, and she searched her mind wildly for some reason that would explain things.

What had she done? How had she offended?

As she stood there, her fingers on the handle of the locked door, the Beggar Man came up the stairs.

He had heard Peg's rather loud, insistent voice from the smoking-room below, and had momentarily left his friend to see if anything was the matter.

Peg blushed fiery red when she saw him. Her black hair was unbound and streaming down over her shoulders. She wore a brilliant cherry-coloured dressing-gown, and her feet were thrust into gaudy Oriental slippers.

”Oh, my gracious!” she said with a gasp.

Forrester's eyes met hers indifferently, though he would have been less than human had he been blind to the picture she made as she stood there in the half-light.

The brilliant gown she wore, her dark hair, and the bright, confused colour in her cheeks accentuated her beauty, for Peg was a beauty, even if it was of a crude, rather vulgar type, and unconsciously Forrester's eyes grew admiring as he asked: ”Is anything the matter? I thought you called.”

Peg laughed nervously.

”Faith won't open the door, that's all. She says she's tired. There's nothing the matter.” Then she giggled, and swung her long hair 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 embarra.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced 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.