'I daresay, old fellow,' he remarked, warming his back before the fire--which he liked at nights, whatever the season of the year--'that this isn't quite what you expected when you began life, but, depend upon it, it's very good business. After all, we very few of us get what we think we shall when we set up in the thing. Here am I--and, by Jove, I started life secretary to a Diocesan Benevolent Fund, and wanting to marry the Archdeacon's daughter! Here are you--well, we know all about you, Beaufort, my boy! Old Mervyn hasn't quite done the course he set out to do. Where's our friend Mrs. Trevalla? What's going to happen to pretty Peggy Ryle?' He dropped his coat-tails and shrugged his shoulders. 'Between you and me, and not for the ladies, we take what we can get and try to be thankful. It's a queer business, but you haven't drawn such a bad ticket after all.' Beaufort Chance took a long pull of whisky-and-soda. The last idea of violent rebellion was gone. Under the easy tones, the comfortably pessimistic doctrine (there is much and peculiar comfort in doctrine of that colour), proceeding from the suave and well-warmed preacher on the hearthrug, there lay a polite intimation of the inevitable. If Fate and the Frickers seemed to mingle and become indistinct in conception, why, so they did in fact. Whose was the whip on the peg--Fate's or Fricker's? And who gives either Fate or Frickers power? Whatever the answer to these questions, Beaufort Chance had no mind that the whip should be taken down. 'I've nothing to complain of,' said he, and drank again. Fricker watched the gulps with a fatherly smile. CHAPTER XXII THE PHILOSOPHY OF IT 'And I think that's an end of any worry about Beaufort Chance!' It was a heartlessly external way of regarding a fellow-creature's fate, but in relating how Connie Fricker had carried off her prisoner, and how subsequent despatches had confirmed his unconditional submission, Peggy had dealt with the narrative in a comedy vein throughout. Though she showed no gratitude to Beaufort, she owed him some as a conversational resource if in no other capacity; he enabled her to carry off the opening of her interview with Airey in that spirit of sturdy unemotionality which she desired--and was rather doubtful of maintaining. Coinciding in her wish and appreciating the device, Airey had listened with an applauding smile. Peggy now made cautious approaches to more difficult ground. 'So he's off Trix's mind,' she concluded, sighing with relief. 'And the other thing's off her mind too. She's heard from Mr. Fricker.' 'Ah!' Airey, who had been walking about, turned short round on her and waited.