Rooms change their aspects as much as faces; he who looks brings to each his own interpretation, and sees himself as much as that on which he gazes. The study was very different now to Peggy from what it had seemed on her previous entry. Very possibly Daniel experienced much the same variety of estimate touching the Lions' Den before he went in and after he came out. Fricker appeared. He had lunched abstemiously, as was his wont, but daintily, as was Mrs. Fricker's business. He expected amusement; neither his heart nor his digestion was likely to be disturbed. An appeal for pity from Peggy Ryle's lips seemed to promise the maximum of enjoyment combined with the minimum of disturbance to business. 'So you've come back, Miss Ryle?' He gave her his lean, dry, strong hand. 'I told you I might,' she nodded, as she sat down in her old seat, opposite to his arm-chair. 'You've got the money?' His tone was one of easy pleasant mockery. 'It's no use trying to--to beat you down, I suppose?' asked Peggy, with an expression of exaggerated woe. But he was too sharp for her. He did not fall into her artless trap. He was lighting his cigar, but he broke off the operation (it was not often that he had been known to do that), and leant across the table towards her. 'My God, child, have you got the money?' he asked her in a sort of excitement. 'Yes, yes, yes!' she broke out. Had not that fact been bottled up in her for hours? His question cut the wire. A metaphor derived from champagne is in no sort inappropriate. 'You've got it? Where have you got it from?' 'Your principle is not to ask that, Mr. Fricker.' 'He must be very fond of you.' 'You're utterly wrong--and rather vulgar,' said Peggy Ryle. 'On the table with it!' laughed Fricker. She threw the little bag across the table. 'Oh, and have you a cigarette, Mr. Fricker?' she implored. Fricker gave a short laugh, and pushed a silver box across to her. She leant back in an extraordinary perfection of pleasure. 'There are a lot of these notes,' he said. 'Are cheques out of fashion, Miss Ryle?' 'You're so suspicious,' she retorted. Apart from difficulties about a banking account, she would not have missed handling the notes for worlds. He counted them carefully. 'Correct!' he pronounced. 'And here's your letter!' she cried, producing it from her pocket; the action was a veritable _coup de théâtre_. 'Oh, I remember my letter,' he said with a smile--and a brow knit in vexation. Then he looked across the table at her. 'I'd have betted ten to one against it,' he remarked. 'You underrate the odds,' Peggy told him in a triumph that really invited Nemesis. 'I'd have betted a thousand to one when I left your house.' 'You're a wonderful girl,' said Fricker. 'How the devil did you do it?' She grew sober for a moment. 'I'm ashamed of how I did it.' Then she burst out again victoriously: 'But I'd do it again, Mr. Fricker!'