Mrs. Bonfill sore at the damage to her infallibility; Barmouth still feeling that rude and sacrilegious thrust at ennobled ribs; Lady Barmouth unable to look her neighbours in the face; Mervyn fearing the whispers and the titters; Lady Blixworth again wearily donning her armour, betaking herself to Barslett, goading Audrey Pollington into making herself attractive; the Glentorlys and a score more of exalted families feeling that they had been sadly 'let in,' treacherously beguiled into petting and patronising an impossible person; Airey Newton oppressed with scorn of himself, yet bound in his chains; Peggy persuaded that something must be done, and shaken out of her usual happiness by the difficulty of doing it—all these people, and no doubt more besides, proved that if the world is not a football for every wanton toe, neither is it an immovable unimpressionable mass, on which individual effort and the vagaries of this man or that make absolutely no impression. Trix's raid had met with defeat, but it had left its effect on many lives, its marks in many quarters. A sense of this joined with the recognition of her own present wretched state to create in Trix the feelings with which she regarded her past proceedings and their outcome. So many people must have grudges against her; if she was not penitent she was frightened; her instinct was to hide, however much she might still hanker after the glories of conspicuous station. Of Airey's disturbance and of Peggy's fretting, indeed, she had only a vague inkling; the world she had left was the vivid thing to her; it seemed to ring with her iniquities as her guilty ears listened from the seclusion of Harriet Street, Covent Garden. She knew it called her impossible; she could not have resented Lord Glentorly's 'pirate craft.'
Not even on Mervyn himself had she been so great an influence as on Beaufort Chance, and, great as the influence was, Beaufort greatly, though not unnaturally, exaggerated it. He set down to her account all the guilt of those practices for which he had suffered and of which Fricker was in reality the chief inspirer; at any rate, if she had not counselled them, she had impelled him to them and had then turned round and refused him the reward for whose sake he had sinned. If he ranked now rather with Fricker than with Mervyn or Constantine Blair, or the men of that sort who had been his colleagues and his equals, the heaviest of the blame rested on Trix. If the meshes of the Fricker net enveloped him more closely day by day, hers was the fault. Countenanced by an element of truth, carried the whole way by resentment, by jealousy, and by the impulse to acquit himself at another's expense, he would have rejoiced to make Trix his scapegoat and to lay on her the burden of his sins. Though she could not bear his punishment, he welcomed her as his partner in misfortune. He longed to see her in her humiliation, and sought a way. When he asked himself what he meant to say to her he could not answer; his impulse was to see her in the dust.
The Frickers often talked of Trix—Fricker with the quiet smile of a man who has done what he had to do and done it well; Mrs. Fricker with heavy self-complacent malevolence; Connie with a lighter yet still malicious raillery. An instinct in Chance made him take small part in these discussions and display some indifference towards them; but soon he gleaned what he wanted from them. Fricker had found out where Trix was; he had received a brief note from her, asking to be informed of the full extent of her speculative liabilities. He described with amusement the lucid explanation which he had sent.
'When she's paid that, and her other debts—which must be pretty heavy—there won't be much left, I fancy,' he reflected.
'Where is she?' asked Connie, in passing curiosity.
'I forget. Oh, here's the letter. Thirty-four Harriet Street, Covent Garden. Hardly sounds princely, does it, Connie?'
They all laughed, and Beaufort Chance with them. But he hoarded up the address in his memory. The next moment, by an impulse to conceal his thoughts, he stole an affectionate glance at Connie and received her sly return of it. He knew that, whatever feeling took him to Trix Trevalla's, his visit would not win approval from Connie Fricker.
On the following morning Mr. Fricker saw that address at the top of another note, whose author introduced herself as a great friend of Mrs. Trevalla. Smiling with increased amusement, he gave her what she asked—an appointment for the following afternoon. It would be Saturday, and Fricker bade her come to his house, not to his office. He had heard Connie speak of her with some envy, and saw no reason why the two girls should not become acquainted. The object of the visit was, he supposed, to make an appeal on Trix Trevalla's behalf. Experience taught him that women attached an extraordinary efficacy to a personal interview—extraordinary, that is, where the other party to the interview was not a fool. His anticipation of the meeting did not differ much from Lady Blixworth's satirical suggestion of its course.
When Peggy came at the appointed hour (she was so far human, Mr. Fricker's suspicions so far justified, that she had taken much pains with her toilet) she was ushered into the drawing-room, not the study, and was met by Connie with profuse apologies. A gentleman had called on papa most unexpectedly; papa had to see the gentleman because the gentleman was leaving for Constantinople the next day. It was something about the Trans-Euphratic Railway, or something tiresome. Would Miss Ryle mind waiting half an hour and having a cup of tea? Mamma would be so sorry to miss her, but it was Lady Rattledowney's day, and Lady Rattledowney was lost without mamma. Did Miss Ryle know the Rattledowneys? Such dear people the Rattledowneys were! They were also, it may be observed, extremely impecunious.