"She couldn"t do it before," explained Peggy, rather eagerly. "They were thrown together in a very unusual way. She saw it coming, but could not do anything to prevent it. And now the man has gone away; and I"m--she is sure he thinks--"

Jean Leslie handed her guest a fresh cup of tea.

"Are you certain," she enquired, "that this friend of yours _wanted_ to keep the young man at arm"s length?"

Peggy twisted her long fingers together.

"I rather fancy, from what she said, that she cared for him a bit," she admitted.

"Then why send him away?" demanded Miss Leslie.

Peggy summoned up a troubled smile.

"Dear old Jean," she said, "you are so practical!"

"Practical? Aye!" replied Jean Leslie grimly. "If women were a little more practical and a little less finicky about what they are pleased to call their hearts, this world would be a more understandable place to live in. Listen! I had a girl friend once--as intimate a friend as yours, I dare say--and when the man she wanted asked her to marry him, she said "No." She meant "Yes," of course,--she merely wanted him to ask her another half-dozen times or so more,--but the stupid man did not understand. He went away, and married some other body whom he did not love, just to be quit of thinking about her. Men are made that way. They will do any daft thing--take to drinking or marry another woman--to drown the pain of remembrance. But this friend of mine, being a woman, could not do that. She just stayed single, and in course of time became an old maid--and a practical one, I promise you! But let us get back to the other girl. Why did she send her lad away?"

"Because there was some one else whom she could not leave."

"A relative?"

"Yes."

Jean Leslie nodded her head slowly and comprehendingly.

"I see," she said at length. "That is different. You mean that the relative would have been helpless without her?"

"Helpless and--friendless," said Peggy gravely.

"Did she tell the young man that that was the reason?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because--because I fancy he was the kind of man who, if he had known the real reason, would have persisted in staying single on her account."

"And why not? Men like that are rare."

"Well, he--she told me that he was the sort of man who had no idea of looking after himself, or making himself comfortable--the sort of man who really _needed_ a wife. It would have been cruel not to let him go.

She might have had to keep him waiting twenty years, and she couldn"t bear to think of him living in discomfort and loneliness all that time; so--"

"So she gave him another reason?"

"Yes."

"What reason?"

"Oh, the reason a girl usually gives nowadays. Other interests--freedom to live one"s own life--and so on. You know."

"Yes, I know," said Jean Leslie bitterly. "You need not tell me. I should like to have just five minutes" talk, in here, with the man that invented the higher education of women! However, that is a digression.

Your friend"s case, as I have said, is different. Evidently she is not _that_ sort of girl. I don"t know what advice to give her, poor soul.

She is in deep waters. But you can tell her from me--"

"Yes?" said Peggy eagerly.

"That she is doing the wrong thing"--Peggy caught her breath--"for the right reason. You can also tell her that she is a brave la.s.s. Perhaps it may help her a little to be told that."

"I know it will," said Peggy getting up. "Goodbye, Jean, dearest! I think I will go and tell her now."

Jean Leslie sat long over the teacups, deep in thought. Mechanically, she found and lit a cigarette, and smoked it to the end. Then she lit another. Darkness had fallen by this time, but still she sat on, gazing into the glowing fire.

At last she rose, and turned up the electric lights. Having done this, she surveyed herself intently in the mirror over the mantelpiece. For all her forty-three years she was a youthful woman. She possessed the white teeth and fair complexion that Scandinavian ancestry has bequeathed to the northeastern Highlands of Scotland. Her hair was abundant, and with a little better dressing would have looked more abundant still.

She turned from the mirror with a quaint little _moue_, and her eyes fell upon a framed photograph which stood upon her writing-table. It was a portrait of Peggy"s mother. She picked it up, and regarded it long and thoughtfully.

"Thank G.o.d, Death cannot always close the account," she said softly.

Then, with a resigned sigh and a downward glance at her comfortable but unfashionable attire, she seated herself abruptly at the bureau and wrote a letter to her dressmaker.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE RIVALS

IT was five o"clock on a fine spring afternoon. The model had just resumed his ordinary raiment and departed, and Montagu Falconer was cleaning his palette. To him entered a timorous maid.

"If you please, sir, Miss Leslie has called."

"That is quite possible," replied Montagu calmly, "but it does not interest me."

"But she wants to see you, sir."

"I fear I cannot oblige her. It is Miss Marguerite"s duty to receive afternoon callers."

"Miss Marguerite is out, and Miss Leslie specially asked for you, sir,"

persisted the maid, trembling beneath her employer"s cold blue eye.

Montagu Falconer ruminated for some moments. Unfortunately he omitted to remove his eye from the maid, and that sensitive young person was on the verge of an hysterical yell when he turned upon his heel and said curtly:--

"Ask her what the devil she wants."

The maid humbly withdrew. Having closed the studio door behind her she indulged in a few grimaces of a heartfelt and satisfying character, and after pausing to admire herself for a brief s.p.a.ce in a Venetian mirror conveniently adjacent, returned to the drawing-room, where she took her stand before Miss Leslie with downcast eyes.