"Oh, very well. I would really prefer to sit in the front; I only thought it would look rather selfish."
There was a note of uncertainty in her voice, and Peg's blue eyes gleamed with a vixenish light as she settled herself comfortably beside Forrester.
They were rather silent on the way home, but beneath her gaudy veil Peg's quick brain was hard at work.
She knew that Faith was faintly resentful, if not actively jealous, and a sense of triumph warmed her heart.
She had read in one of her favourite novelettes of a heroine who had never appreciated the goodness and worth of the man to whom she was married until another woman—a "syren" she had been called in the story—had stolen him from her, and with a wild flight of sentimental imagination she already saw herself nicely fitted with the part.
She stole a little glance at Forrester, and a sigh shook her. What happiness to be loved by such a man! Nothing that she had ever come across in fiction could yield half such exquisite bliss.
To be his wife! To be with him always!... She lost herself in a world of dreams.
Never once did she think now of his wealth, nor the advantages to be gained from it. The man himself filled the picture of her thoughts. She could have been equally happy with him in the dreary streets of Poplar as in the luxury of the house at Hampstead.
How she had hated him at first! How she had sneered at Faith and tried to set her against him, and now the scales had tipped the other way and left her kneeling at his feet.
She was humble enough to know herself far below him, shrewd enough to realize that, though she might find it heaven to be with him, his happiness could never lie with her. She knew that she jarred on him in a thousand ways, though lately she had recognized that he had subtly changed towards her, was kinder, more tolerant, and for one wild moment she allowed her thoughts to soar up into the blue skies of impossibility.