He took up his cigar again, and this time he lit it. To Peggy the room seemed to go round. 'Why do you do that?' she demanded. 'On my word, I don't know. Your infernal pluck, I think,' he said in a puzzled tone. 'I won't have it. It was a bargain.' 'It's not your money, you may remember.' Peggy had forgotten that. 'It might be a pleasant surprise to--to your friend,' he went on. 'And, if you'll let me do it, it will, Miss Ryle, be rather a pleasant change to me.' 'Why do you do it?' she asked again. He made her an odd answer--very odd, to come from him. 'Because of the look in your eyes, my dear.' His tone was free from all offence now; he spoke as a father might. If his words surprised her to wonder, he had no better understanding of hers. 'You too, you too!' she whispered, and the eyes which had moved him grew misty. 'Come, don't refuse me,' he said. 'Take it back to your friend. He'll find a use for it.' He seemed to touch a spring in her, to give her a cue. 'Yes, yes!' she assented eagerly. 'Perhaps there would be a use for it. Do you give it me? Freely, freely?' 'Freely,' answered Fricker. 'And all you want shall be said to Mrs. Trevalla.' Peggy opened her bag and began to put the notes in; but she looked still at Fricker. 'Did you ever think of anything like this?' she asked in a new burst of confidence. 'No, I didn't,' he answered, with a brusque laugh. 'You like doing it?' 'Well, was there any compulsion, Miss Ryle?' 'I shall take it,' she said, 'and I thank you very much.' 'I should have been distressed if you hadn't taken it,' said he. Peggy knew that he spoke truth, strange as the truth might be. She had an impulse to laugh, an impulse to cry. Fricker's quiet face quelled both in her. 'And that finishes our business, I suppose?' he asked. 'It's understood that you don't worry Trix any more?' 'Henceforward Mrs. Trevalla ceases to exist for me.' He was really quite in the same tale with Mrs. Bonfill and society at large. His declaration seemed to amuse Peggy. 'Oh, well, that's putting it rather strongly, perhaps,' she murmured. 'Not a bit!' retorted Fricker, with his confident contemptuousness. 'You can never tell how you may run up against people,' remarked Peggy with a mature sagacity. He leant back, looking at her. 'I've learnt to think that your observations have a meaning, Miss Ryle.' 'Yes,' Peggy confessed. 'But I don't exactly know----' She frowned a moment, and then smiled with the brightness of a new idea. 'Where's your daughter, Mr. Fricker?' 'Connie's in her room.' He did not add that, by way of keeping vivid the memory of moral lessons, he had sent her there on Peggy's arrival. 'Do you think she'd give me a cup of tea?' It was rather early for tea. 'Well, I daresay she would,' smiled Fricker. 'I shall hear what's up afterwards?' 'Yes, I'm sure you will,' promised Peggy.