'Oh, what a world it is, if you treat it properly, Airey!' she cried.
But she also had made her discovery. It was with plain amusement and a little laugh, still half-incredulous, that she added: 'And after all there may be some good in saving money too!'
CHAPTER XXIII THE LAST KICK
It was no wonder that Trix Trevalla was holding up her head again. Her neck was freed from a triple load. Mervyn was gone, and gone, she had warrant for believing, if not in contentment, yet in some degree of charity. Beaufort Chance, that terror of hers, whose coarse rebukes made justice seem base cruelty, was gone too—and Trix was still unregenerate enough not to care a jot with what feelings. His fate seemed so exquisitely appropriate to him as to exclude penitence in her. Lastly, Fricker was gone, and with him the damning sense of folly, of being a silly dupe, which had weighed more sorely than anything else on a spirit full of pride. Never a doubt had she about Fricker's letter. He had indeed been honourable in his dealing with Peggy Ryle; he had left Trix to think that in surrendering the shares to him she fell in with a business proposal which he was interested in making, and that she gave at least as good as she received. It needed very little more to make her believe that she was conferring a favour on him, and thereby cancelling the last item of the score that he once had against her. Surely, then, Peggy was both wise and merciful in arguing that she should not know the truth, but should still think that she was in debt to no man for her emancipation.
Let not Peggy's mercy be disputed, nor her wisdom either; for these points are immaterial. The fault that young lady did commit lay in a little oversight. It is well to decide that a secret shall be kept; but it is prudent, as a preliminary thereto, to consider how many people already know it or are in a position where they may find it out. Since, though the best thing of all may be that it should never be told, the second best is often to tell it oneself—and the worst of all to leave the telling in the hands of an enemy. It is just possible that Peggy had grown a little too confident with all her successful generalship. At any rate this oversight of hers made not a little trouble.
'Dear Mr. Trent,—Come to me immediately, please. I have heard a most extraordinary story. I can hardly believe it, but I must see you at once. I shall be at home from six to seven and later.
'Yours truly,
'Trix Trevalla.'
'Now what's the meaning of that?' asked Tommy, smoothing his hat and setting out again without so much as sitting down for a pipe after he got back from the City. 'Has Peggy been up to mischief again?' He frowned; he had not forgiven Peggy. It is not safe to discourage a standard which puts the keeping of promises very high and counts any argument which tends the other way in a particular case as dangerous casuistry. Tommy's temperament was dead against casuistry; perhaps, to be candid, his especial gifts of intellect constituted no temptation to the art.
Trix received him with chilling haughtiness. Evidently something was wrong. And the wrong thing was to be visited on the first chance-comer—just like a woman, thought Tommy, hasty in his inference and doubtless unjust in his psychology. In a few moments he found that he was considered by no means a chance-comer in this affair; nor had he been sent for merely as an adviser. Before Trix really opened the case at all, he had discovered that in some inexplicable way he was a culprit; the tones in which she bade him sit down were enough to show any intelligent man as much.