'I've just been to call on your friends the Frickers,' she said brightly. 'What a nice girl Miss Fricker is! She says she's great friends with you.' 'I go there a lot on business,' he explained stiffly. 'On business?' Peggy laughed. 'I daresay you do, Mr. Chance! She's so friendly and cordial, isn't she? It must be nice riding with her! And what a beautiful bracelet you gave her!' Beaufort shot a morose glance at her, and from her to Trix. Trix was smiling, though still agitated. Peggy was laughing in an open good-natured fashion. 'I envied it awfully,' she confessed. 'Diamonds and pearls, Trix--just beauties!' Mr. Beaufort Chance said good-bye. 'I hope to see you again,' he added to Trix from the doorway. 'Do tell Miss Fricker how much I like her,' Peggy implored, following him to the baize door. He went downstairs, silently, or not quite silently, cursing Peggy, yet on the whole not ill-pleased with his visit. He seemed to have made some progress in the task of subduing Trix Trevalla. She had been frightened--that was something. He walked off buttoning his frock-coat, looking like a prosperous, orderly, and most respectable gentleman. Fortunately emotions primitively barbarous are not indicated by external labels, or walks in the street would be fraught with strange discoveries. It did not take long to put Peggy abreast of events; Trix's eyes could have done it almost without words. 'Men are astonishing,' opined Peggy, embracing Beaufort Chance and Fricker in a liberal generalisation. 'They say we're astonishing,' Trix reminded her. 'Oh, that's just because they're stupid.' She grew grave. 'Anyhow they're very annoying,' she concluded. 'He said he'd come again, Peggy. What a worm I am now! I'm horribly afraid.' 'So he did,' Peggy reflected, and sat silent with a queer little smile on her lips. Trix Trevalla fell into a new fit of despair, or a fresh outpouring of the bitterness that was always in her now. 'I might as well,' she said. 'I might just as well. What else is there left for me? I've made shipwreck of it all, and Beaufort Chance isn't far wrong about me. He's just about the sort of fate I deserve. Why do the things you deserve make you sick to think of them? He wouldn't actually beat me if I behaved properly and did as I was told, I suppose, and that's about as much as I can expect. Oh, I've been such a fool!' 'Having been a fool doesn't matter, if you're sensible now,' said Peggy. 'Sensible! Yes, he told me to be sensible too! I suppose the sensible thing would be to tell him to come again, to lie down before him, and thank him very much if he didn't stamp too hard on me.' Peggy remembered how Mr. Fricker had hinted that Trix was very much in the position in which her own fancy was now depicting her. Could that be helped? It seemed not--without four thousand pounds anyhow.