"And you don't know who he is?" her mother asked anxiously.
Faith shook her head. "He didn't tell me, but ... mother—who was King Cophetua?"
They were in the little sitting-room now, where tea was laid ready, and the twins sitting up to table.
Mrs. Ledley was busying herself with the teapot. She answered absently that King Cophetua was only a man in a story, a king who married a beggar maid.
"But it was only a story, Faith," she added earnestly. "One of those stories which couldn't end happily even if it came true."
Perhaps those tired eyes of hers had seen more than one would have imagined; perhaps she guessed the trend of her daughter's thoughts.
Faith went on with her tea, but above the noise and chatter of the twins she seemed to hear the soft purr of the wonderful car that had brought her home, and the voice of its owner who had called himself "the Beggar Man."
He was not very young, he was not very good-looking, but his voice and his eyes had been kind, and he had given Faith her first glimpse of the romance for which her youth had been unconsciously hungering.