'He said he'd come again, Peggy. What a worm I am now! I'm horribly afraid.'
'So he did,' Peggy reflected, and sat silent with a queer little smile on her lips.
Trix Trevalla fell into a new fit of despair, or a fresh outpouring of the bitterness that was always in her now.
'I might as well,' she said. 'I might just as well. What else is there left for me? I've made shipwreck of it all, and Beaufort Chance isn't far wrong about me. He's just about the sort of fate I deserve. Why do the things you deserve make you sick to think of them? He wouldn't actually beat me if I behaved properly and did as I was told, I suppose, and that's about as much as I can expect. Oh, I've been such a fool!'
'Having been a fool doesn't matter, if you're sensible now,' said Peggy.
'Sensible! Yes, he told me to be sensible too! I suppose the sensible thing would be to tell him to come again, to lie down before him, and thank him very much if he didn't stamp too hard on me.'
Peggy remembered how Mr. Fricker had hinted that Trix was very much in the position in which her own fancy was now depicting her. Could that be helped? It seemed not—without four thousand pounds anyhow.
Trix came and leant over the back of her chair. 'I laughed at him, Peggy—I laughed, but I might yield. He might frighten me into it. And I've nowhere else to turn. Supposing I went to him with my hundred a year? That's about what I've left myself, I suppose, after everything's paid.'
'Well, that's a lot of money,' said Peggy.