young women are so moral.'
'I don't care,' said Peggy defiantly.
'Women have an extraordinary gift for disliking one another on sight,' mused Airey in an injured voice.
'You seem to have liked Mrs. Trevalla a good deal on sight.'
'She looked so sad, so solitary, a mere girl in her widow's weeds.' His tone grew compassionate, almost tender, as he recalled the forlorn figure which had timidly stolen into the dining-room of the Paris hotel.
'You'll find her a little bit changed perhaps,' Peggy suggested with a suppressed malice that found pleasure in anticipating his feelings.
'Oh, well, she must come anyhow, I suppose.'
'Yes, let her come, Airey. It does these people good to see how the poor live.'
Airey laughed, but not very heartily. However, it was well understood that everybody in their circle was very poor, and Peggy felt no qualms about referring to the fact.
'I shall come the next day and hear all about the interview. Fancy these interesting things happening to you! Because, you know, she's rather famous. Mrs. Bonfill has taken her up, and the Glentorlys are devoted to her, and Lady Blixworth has said some of her best things about her. She'll bring you into touch with fashion.'
'Hang fashion!' said Airey. 'I wonder what her difficulty is.' He seemed quite preoccupied with the idea of Mrs. Trevalla's difficulty.
'I see you're going to be very romantic indeed,' laughed Peggy Ryle.
His eyes dwelt on her for a moment, and a very friendly expression filled them.
'Don't you get into any difficulties?' he said.
'There's never but one with me,' she laughed; 'and that doesn't hurt, Airey.'
There was a loud and cheerful knock on the door.
'Visitors! When people come, how do you account for me?'
'I say nothing. I believe you're taken for my daughter.'
'Not since you trimmed your beard! Well, it doesn't matter, does it? Let him in.'
The visitor proved to be nobody to whom Peggy needed to be accounted for; he was Tommy Trent, the smart, trim young man who had danced with her at Mrs. Bonfill's party.
'You here again!' he exclaimed in tones of grave censure, as he laid down his hat on the top of the red-leather book on the little table. He blew on the book first, to make sure it was not dusty.
Peggy smiled, and Airey relit his pipe. Tommy walked across and looked at the débris of the loaf. He shook his head when Peggy offered him tea.
A sudden idea seemed to occur to him.
'I'm awfully glad to find you here,' he remarked to her. 'It saves me going up to your place, as I meant. I've got some people dining to-night, and one of them's failed. I wonder if you'd come? I know it's a bore coming again so soon, but——'
'I haven't been since Saturday.'
'But it would get me out of a hole.' He spoke in humble entreaty.
'I'd come directly, but I'm engaged.'
Tommy looked at her sorrowfully, and, it must be added, sceptically.
'Engaged to dinner and supper,' averred Peggy with emphasis as she pulled her hat straight and put on her gloves.
'You wouldn't even look in between the two and—and have an ice with us?'
'I really can't eat three meals in one evening, Tommy.'
'Oh, chuck one of them. You might, for once!'
'Impossible! I'm dining with my oldest friend,' smiled Peggy. 'I simply can't.' She turned to Airey, giving him her hand with a laugh. 'I like you best, because you just let me——'
Both words and laughter died away; she stopped abruptly, looking from one man to the other. There was something in their faces that arrested her words and her merriment. She could not analyse what it was, but she saw that she had made both of them uncomfortable. They had guessed what she was going to say; it would have been painful to one of them, and the other knew it. But whom had she wounded—Tommy by implying that his hospitality was importunate and his kindness clumsy, or Airey by a renewed reference to his poverty as shown in the absence of pressing invitations from him? She could not tell; but a constraint had fallen on them both. She cut her farewell short and went away, vaguely vexed and penitent for an offence which she perceived but did not understand.
The two men stood listening a moment to her light footfall on the stairs.
'It's all a lie, you know,' said Tommy. 'She isn't engaged to dinner or to supper either. It's beastly, that's what it is.'
'Yours was all a lie too, I suppose?' Airey spoke in a dull hard voice.
'Of course it was, but I could have beaten somebody up in time, or said they'd caught influenza, or been given a box at the opera, or something.'
Airey sat down by the fireplace, his chin sunk on his necktie. He seemed unhappy and rather ashamed. Tommy glanced at him with a puzzled look, shook his head, and then broke into a smile—as though, in the end, the only thing for it was to be amused. Then he drew a long envelope from his pocket.
'I've brought the certificates along,' he said. 'Here they are. Two thousand. Just look at them. It's a good thing; and if you sit on it for a bit, it'll pay for keeping.' He laid the envelope on the small table by Airey's side, took up his hat, put it on, and lit a cigarette as he repeated, 'Just see they're all right, old chap.'
'They're sure to be right.' Airey shifted uncomfortably in his chair and pulled at his empty pipe.
Tommy tilted his hat far back on his head, turned a chair back foremost, and sat down on it, facing his friend.
'I'm your business man,' he remarked. 'I do your business and I hold my tongue about it. Don't I?'
'Like the tomb,' Airey acknowledged.
'And—— Well, at any rate let me congratulate you on the bread-and-butter. Only—only, I say, she'd have dined with you, if you'd asked her, Airey.'
His usually composed and unemotional voice shook for an almost imperceptible moment.
'I know,' said Airey Newton. He rose, unlocked the safe, and threw the long envelope in. Then he unlocked the red-leather book, took a pen, made a careful entry in it, re-locked it, and returned to his chair. He said nothing more, but he glanced once at Tommy Trent in a timid way. Tommy smiled back in recovered placidity. Then they began to talk of inventions, patents, processes, companies, stocks, shares, and all manner of things that produce or have to do with money.
'So far, so good,' ended Tommy. 'And if the oxygen process proves commercially practicable—it's all right in theory, I know—I fancy you may look for something big.' He threw away his cigarette and stood up, as if to go. But he lingered a moment, and a
