But she found the Beggar Man more difficult to manage than she had imagined. He demanded to see Faith, and being determinedly repulsed, asked reasons.
Peg hesitated; then she said with evident enjoyment:
"Well, you'll have to know in the end, so I may as well tell you now! She's found out something about you."
Forrester changed colour a little.
"What the deuce do you mean?" he demanded.
Peg shrugged her shoulders.
"I only mean that she told me so last night. Of course, she's sick and ill, and everything looks its blackest, and I told her she was making too much of it, but she wouldn't listen! I'm not sensitive myself, but she seems to think you're responsible for her father's death. Her father was a gentleman, you know," she added in emphatic parenthesis.
The Beggar Man laughed.
"I never knew her father. I never saw him in my life to the best of my knowledge."
Peg regarded him with her handsome head on one side, and her arms akimbo.