King Cophetua had loved the Beggar Maid and been happy with her. Why should the day of such miracles be at an end? She looked again at the man beside her, and saw that his eyes were fixed on his wife with such a look of sadness in them that she felt the tears rising to her own.
He loved Faith. Whatever he might say or pretend, Peg knew that he loved her, and she gripped her hands beneath the cover of the rug. What a fool Faith was! What a blind little fool, that she could laugh and be merry with a man like Digby when this king amongst men was waiting for her to look his way.
And the pendulum of Peg's emotions swung back again. After all, what was her own happiness compared with his? And her thoughts flew to the latest and as yet unfinished novelette lying on her bed at home in which the Lady Gwendoline Maltravers had just dropped gracefully on to her aristocratic knees to plead for her lover's honour with the brutal squire who had sworn to ruin him.
"Take me! Body and soul I will be yours, if only you will spare him! Spare the man I love, and give him his happiness!"
Peg thought it a noble and lofty sentiment, and a curious feeling of sympathy and kinship with the Lady Gwendoline swept through her heart.
She, too, if the occasion arose could sacrifice everything—body and soul—in order that the man she loved might be happy.
CHAPTER XI
When Peg went to Faith's room that night for their usual gossip, she found the door locked against her.