'Then will you put it in writing, please?' She pointed at the table with a peremptory air.
Infinitely amused again, Fricker sat down and embodied his undertaking in a letter, ceremoniously addressed to Miss Ryle, expressed and signed in the name of his firm; he blotted the letter and gave it to her in an open envelope.
'It's better not to trust to memory, however great confidence we may have in one another, isn't it?' said he.
'Much,' agreed Peggy drily. 'I don't suppose I can get all that money, but I'm going to try,' she announced.
'I daresay there are people who would do a great deal for you,' he suggested in sly banter.
Peggy flushed again. 'I shouldn't ask anyone like that. I couldn't.' She broke off, indignant with herself; she had taken almost a confidential tone. 'It's not your concern where or how I get it.'
'You express the view I've always taken most exactly, Miss Ryle.'
He was openly deriding her, but she hardly hated him now. He was too strange to hate, she was coming to think. She smiled at him as she asked a question:—
'Does money always make people what you are?'
'Money?' Fricker stood with his hands in his pockets, seeming a little puzzled.