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"Gossip--chatter--half malicious without malicious intention--don't you know the way of the sweet creatures? I would tell you more if I could. The simple truth is that Irene has never spoken to me about it--never once. When it happened, she came suddenly to Paris, to a hotel, and from there wrote me a letter, just saying that her marriage was off; no word of explanation. Of course I fetched her at once to my house, and from that moment to this I have heard not one reference from her to the matter. You would like to know something about the hero? He has been away a good deal--building up the Empire, as they say; which means, of course, looking after his own and other people's dividends."

"Thank you. Now let us talk about the Castle."

But Mrs. Borisoff was not in a good humour to-day, and Piers very soon took his leave. Her hand felt rather hot; he noticed this particularly, as she let it lie in his longer than usual--part of her absent-mindedness.

Piers had often resented, as a weakness, his susceptibility to the influence of others' moods; he did so to-day, when having gone to Mrs. Borisoff in an unusually cheerful frame of mind, he came away languid and despondent. But his scheme of life permitted no such idle brooding as used to waste his days; self-discipline sent him to his work, as usual, through the afternoon, and in the evening he walked ten miles.

The weather was brilliant. As he stood, far away in rural stillness, watching a noble sunset, he repeated to himself words which had of late become his motto, "Enjoy now! This moment will never come again." But the intellectual resolve was one thing, the moral aptitude another. He did not enjoy; how many hours in all his life had brought him real enjoyment? Idle to repeat and repeat that life was the passing minute, which must be seized, made the most of; he could not live in the present; life was to him for ever a thing postponed. "I will live--I will enjoy--some day!" As likely as not that day would never dawn.

Was it true, as admonishing reason sometimes whispered, that happiness cometh not by observation, that the only true content is in the moments which we pass without self-consciousness? Is all attainment followed by disillusion? A man aware of his health is on the verge of malady. Were he to possess his desire, to exclaim, "I am happy," would the Fates chastise his presumption?

That way lay asceticism, which his soul abhorred. On, rather, following the great illusion, if this it were! "The crown of life"--philosophise as he might, that word had still its meaning, still its inspiration. Let the present pass untasted; he preferred his dream of a day to come.

Next morning, very unexpectedly, he received a note from Mrs. Borisoff inviting him to dine with her a few days hence. About her company she said nothing, and Piers went, uncertain whether it was a dinner _tete-a-tete_ or with other guests. When he entered the room, the first face he beheld was Irene's.

It was a very small party, and the hostess wore her gayest countenance. A delightful evening, from the social point of view; for Piers Otway a time of self-forgetfulness in the pleasures of sight and hearing. He could have little private talk with Irene; she did not talk much with anyone; but he saw her, he heard her voice, he lived in the glory of her presence. Moreover, she consented to play. Of her skill as a pianist, Otway could not judge; what he heard was Music, music absolute, the very music of the spheres. When it ceased, Mrs. Borisoff chanced to look at him; he was startlingly pale, his eyes wide as if in vision more than mortal.

"I leave town to-morrow," said his hostess, as he took leave. "Some friends are going with me. You shall hear how we get on at the Castle."

Perhaps her look was meant to supplement this bare news. It seemed to offer reassurance. Did she understand his look of entreaty in reply?

Music breathed about him in the lonely hours. It exalted his passion, lulled the pains of desire, held the flesh subservient to spirit. What is love, says the physiologist, but ravening sex? If so, in Piers Otway's breast the primal instinct had undergone strange transformation. How wrought?--he asked himself. To what destiny did it correspond, this winged love soaring into the infinite? This rapture of devotion, this utter humbling of self, this ardour of the poet soul singing a fellow-creature to the heaven of heavens--by what alchemy comes it forth from blood and tissue? Nature has no need of such lyric life her purpose is well achieved by humbler instrumentality. Romantic lovers are not the ancestry of noblest lines.

And if--as might well be--his love were defeated, fruitless, what end in the vast maze of things would his anguish serve?

CHAPTER XXXIV

After his day's work, he had spent an hour among the pictures at Burlington House. He was lingering before an exquisite landscape, unwilling to change this atmosphere of calm for the roaring street, when a voice timidly addressed him:

"Mr. Otway!"

How altered! The face was much, much older, and in some indeterminable way had lost its finer suggestions. At her best, Olga Hannaford had a distinction of feature, a singularity of emotional expression, which made her beautiful in Olga Florio the lines of visage were far less subtle, and classed her under an inferior type. Transition from maidenhood to what is called the matronly had been too rapid; it was emphasised by her costume, which cried aloud in its excess of modish splendour.

"How glad I am to see you again!" she sighed tremorously, pressing his hand with fervour, gazing at him with furtive directness. "Are you living in England now?"

Piers gave an account of himself. He was a little embarrassed but quite unagitated. A sense of pity averted his eyes after the first wondering look.

"Will you--may I venture--can you spare the time to come and have tea with me? My carriage is waiting--I am quite alone--I only looked in for a few minutes, to rest my mind after a lunch with, oh, such tiresome people!"

His impulse was to refuse, at all costs to refuse. The voice, the glance, the phrases jarred upon him, shocked him. Already he had begun "I am afraid"--when a hurried, vehement whisper broke upon his excuse.

"Don't be unkind to me! I beg you to come! I entreat you!"

"I will come with pleasure," he said in a loud voice of ordinary civility.

At once she turned, and he followed. Without speaking, they descended the great staircase; a brougham drove up; they rolled away westward. Never had Piers felt such thorough moral discomfort; the heavily perfumed air of the carriage depressed and all but nauseated him; the inevitable touch of Olga's garments made him shrink. She had begun to talk, and talked incessantly throughout the homeward drive; not much of herself, or of him, but about the pleasures and excitements of the idle-busy world. It was meant, he supposed, to convey to him an idea of her prosperous and fashionable life. Her husband, she let fall, was for the moment in Italy; affairs of importance sometimes required his presence there; but they both preferred England. The intellectual atmosphere of London--where else could one live on so high a level?

The carriage stopped in a street beyond Edgware Road, at a house of more modest appearance than Otway had looked for. Just as they alighted, a nursemaid with a perambulator was approaching the door; Piers caught sight of a very pale little face shadowed by the hood, but his companion, without heeding, ran up the steps, and knocked violently. They entered.

Still the oppressive atmosphere of perfumes. Left for a few minutes in a little drawing-room, or boudoir, Piers stood marvelling at the ingenuity which had packed so much furniture and bric-tate-brac, so many pictures, so much drapery, into so small a space. He longed to throw open the window; he could not sit still in this odour-laden hothouse, where the very flowers were burdensome by excess. When Olga reappeared, she was gorgeous in flowing tea-gown; her tawny hair hung low in artful profusion; her neck and arms were bare, her feet brilliantly slippered.

"Ah! How good, how good, it is to sit down and talk to you once more!--Do you like my room?"

"You have made yourself very comfortable," replied Otway, striking a note as much as possible in contrast to that of his hostess. "Some of these drawings are your own work, no doubt?"

"Yes, some of them," she answered languidly. "Do you remember that pastel? Ah, surely you do--from the old days at Ewell!"

"Of course!--That is a portrait of your husband?" he added, indicating a head on a little easel.

"Yes--idealised!"

She laughed and put the subject away. Then tea was brought in, and after pouring it, Olga grew silent. Resolute to talk, Piers had the utmost difficulty in finding topics, but he kept up an everyday sort of chat, postponing as long as possible the conversation foreboded by his companion's face. When he was weary, Olga's opportunity came.

"There is something I _must_ say to you----"

Her arms hung lax, her head drooped forward, she looked at him from under her brows.

"I have suffered so much--oh, I have suffered! I have longed for this moment. Will you say--that you forgive me?"

"My dear Mrs. Florio"--Piers began with good-natured expostulation, a sort of forced bluffness; but she would not hear him.

"Not that name! Not from _you_. There's no harm; you won't--you can't misunderstand me, such old friends as we are. I want you to call me by my own name, and to make me feel that we are friends still--that you can really forgive me."

"There is nothing in the world to forgive," he insisted, in the same tone. "Of course we are friends! How could we be anything else?"

"I behaved infamously to you! I can't think how I had the heart to do it!"

Piers was tortured with nervousness. Had her voice and manner declared insincerity, posing, anything of that kind, he would have found the situation much more endurable; but Olga had tears in her eyes, and not the tears of an actress; her tones had recovered something of their old quality, and reminded him painfully of the time when Mrs. Hannaford was dying. She held a hand to him, her pale face besought his compassion.

"Come now, let us talk in the old way, as you wish," he said, just pressing her fingers. "Of course I felt it--but then I was myself altogether to blame. I importuned you for what you couldn't give. Remembering that, wasn't your action the most sensible, and really the kindest?"

"I don't know," Olga murmured, in a voice just audible.

"Of course it was! There now, we've done with all that. Tell me more about your life this last year or two. You are such a brilliant person. I felt rather overcome----"

"Nonsense!" But Olga brightened a little. "What of your own brilliancy? I read somewhere that you are a famous man in Russia----"

Piers laughed, spontaneously this time, and, finding it a way of escape, gossiped about his own achievements with mirthful exaggeration.

"Do you see the Derwents?" Mrs. Florio asked of a sudden, with a sidelong look.

So vexed was Otway at the embarrassment he could not wholly hide, and which delayed his answer, that he spoke the truth with excessive bluntness.

"I have met Miss Derwent in society."

"I don't often see them," said Olga, in a tone of weariness. "I suppose we belong to different worlds."

At the earliest possible moment, Piers rose with decision. He felt that he had not pleased Mrs. Florio, that perhaps he had offended her, and in leaving her he tried to atone for involuntary unkindness.

"But we shall see each other again, of course!" she exclaimed, retaining his hand. "You will come again soon?"

"Certainly I will."

"And your address--let me have your address----"

He breathed deeply in the open air. Glancing back at the house when he had crossed the street, he saw a white hand waved to him at a window; it hurried his step.

On the following day, Mrs. Florio visited her friend Miss Bonnicastle, who had some time since exchanged the old quarters in Great Portland Street for a house in Pimlico, where there was a larger studio (workshop, as she preferred to call it), hung about with her own and other people's designs. The artist of the poster was full as ever of vitality and of good-nature, but her humour had not quite the old spice; a stickler for decorum would have said that she was decidedly improved, that she had grown more womanly; and something of this change appeared also in her work, which tended now to the graceful rather than the grotesque. She received her fashionable visitant with off-hand friendliness, not altogether with cordiality.

"Oh, I've something to show you. Do you know that name?"

Olga took a business-card, and read upon it: "Alexander Otway, Dramatic & Musical Agent."

"It's his brother," she said, in a voice of quiet surprise.

"I thought so. The man called yesterday--wants a fetching thing to boom an Irish girl at the halls. There's her photo."

It represented a piquant person in short skirts; a face neither very pretty nor very young, but likely to be deemed attractive by the public in question. They amused themselves over it for a moment.

"He used to be a journalist," said Olga. "Does he seem to be doing well?"

"Couldn't say. A great talker, and a furious Jingo."

"Jingo?"

"This woman is to sing a song of his composition, all about the Empire. Not the hall; the British. Glorifies the Flag, that blessed rag--a rhyme I suggested to him, and asked him to pay me for. It's a taking tune, and we shall have it everywhere, no doubt. He sang a verse--I wish you could have heard him. A queer fish!"

Olga walked about, seeming to inspect the pictures, but in reality much occupied with her thoughts.

"Well," she said presently, "I only looked in, dear, to say how-do-you-do."

Miss Bonnicastle was drawing; she turned, as if to shake hands, but looked her friend in the face with a peculiar expression, far more earnest than was commonly seen in her.

"You called on Kite yesterday morning."

Olga, with slight confusion, admitted that she had been to see the artist. For some weeks Kite had suffered from an ailment which confined him to the house; he could not walk, and indeed could do nothing but lie and read, or talk of what he would do, when he recovered his health. Cheap claret having lost its inspiring force, the poor fellow had turned to more potent beverages, and would ere now have sunk into inscrutable deeps but for Miss Bonnicastle, who interested herself in his welfare. Olga, after losing sight of him for nearly two years, by chance discovered his whereabouts and his circumstances, and twice in the past week had paid him a visit.

"I wanted to tell you," pursued Miss Bonnicastle, in a steady, matter-of-fact voice, "that he's going to have a room in this house, and be looked after."

"Indeed?"

There was a touch of malice in Olga's surprise. She held herself rather stiffly.

"It's just as well to be straightforward," continued the other. "I should like to say that it'll be very much better if you don't come to see him at all."

Olga was now very dignified indeed.

"Oh, pray say no more I quite understand--quite!"

"I shouldn't have said it at all," rejoined Miss Bonnicastle, "if I could have trusted your--discretion. The fact is, I found I couldn't."

"Really!" exclaimed Olga, red with anger. "You might spare me insults!"

"Come, come! We're not going to fly at each other, Olga. I intended no insult; but, whilst we're about it, do take advice from one who means it well. Sentiment is all right, but sentimentality is all wrong. Do get rid of it, there's a good girl. You're meant for something better."

Olga made a great sweep of the floor with her skirts, and vanished in a whirl of perfume.

She drove straight to the address which she had seen on Alexander Otway's card. It was in a decently sordid street south of the river; in a window on the ground floor hung an announcement of Alexander's name and business. As Olga stood at the door, there came out, showily dressed for walking, a person in whom she at once recognised the original of the portrait at Miss Bonnicastle's. It was no other than Mrs. Otway, the "Biddy" whose simple singing had so pleased her brother-in-law years ago.

"Is it the agent you want to see?" she asked, in her tongue of County Wexford. "The door to the right."

Alexander jumped up, all smiles at the sight of so grand a lady. He had grown very obese, and very red about the neck; his linen might have been considerably cleaner, and his coat better brushed. But he seemed in excellent spirits, and glowed when his visitor began by saying that she wished to speak in confidence of a delicate matter.

"Mr. Otway, you have an elder brother, his name Daniel."

The listener's countenance fell.

"Madam, I'm sorry to say I have."

"He has written to me, more than once, a begging letter. My name doesn't matter; I'll only say now that he used to know me slightly long ago. I wish to ask you whether he is really in want."

Alexander hesitated, with much screwing of the features.

"Well, he may be, now and then," was his reply at length. "I have helped him, but, to tell the truth, it's not much good. So far as I know, he has no regular supplies--but it's his own fault."

"Exactly." Olga evidently approached a point still more delicate. "I presume he has worn out the patience of _both_ brothers?"

"Ah!" The agent shook his head, "I'm sorry to say that the _other's_ patience--I see you know something of our family circumstances--never allowed itself to be tried. He's very well off, I believe, but he'll do nothing for poor Dan, and never would. I'm bound to admit Dan has his faults, but still----"

His brows expressed sorrow rather than anger on the subject of his hard-fisted relative.

"Do you happen to know anything," pursued Olga, lowering her voice, "of a transaction about certain--certain letters, which were given up by Daniel Otway?"

"Why--yes. I've heard something about that affair."

"Those letters, I always understood, were purchased from him at a considerable price."

"That's true," replied Alexander, smiling familiarly as he leaned across the table. "But the considerable price was never paid--not one penny of it."

Olga's face changed. She had a wondering lost, pained look.

"Mr. Otway, are you _sure_ of that?"

"Well, pretty sure. Dan has talked of it more than once, and I don't think he could talk as he does if there wasn't a real grievance. I'm very much afraid he was cheated. Perhaps I oughtn't to use that word; I daresay Dan had no right to ask money for the letters at all. But there was a bargain, and I'm afraid it wasn't honourably kept on the other side."

Olga reflected for a moment, and rose, saying that she was obliged, that this ended her business. Alexander's curiosity sought to prolong the conversation, but in vain. He then threw out a word concerning his professional interests; would the lady permit him to bespeak her countenance for a new singer, an Irish girl of great talent, who would be coming out very shortly?

"She has a magnificent song, madam! The very spirit of Patriotism--stirring, stirring! Let me offer you one of her photos. Miss Ennis Corthy--you'll soon see the announcements."

Olga drove away in a troubled dream.

CHAPTER XXXV

"The 13th will suit admirably," wrote Helen Borisoff.

"That morning my guests leave, and we shall be quiet--except for the popping of guns round about. Which reminds me that my big, healthy Englishman of a cousin (him you met in town) will be down here to slaughter little birds in aristocratic company, and may most likely look in to tell us of his bags. I will meet you at the station."

So Irene, alone, journeyed from King's Cross into the North Riding. At evening, the sun golden amid long lazy clouds that had spent their showers, she saw wide Wensleydale, its closing hills higher to north and south as the train drew onward, green slopes of meadow and woodland rising to the beat and the heather. At a village station appeared the welcoming face of her friend Helen. A countryman with his homely gig drove them up the hillside, the sweet air singing about them from moorland heights, the long dale spreading in grander prospect as they ascended, then hidden as they dropped into a wooded glen, where the horse splashed through a broad beck and the wheels jolted over boulders of limestone. Out again into the sunset, and at a turn of the climbing road stood up before them the grey old Castle, in its shadow the church and the hamlet, and all around the glory of rolling hills.

Of the four great towers, one lay a shattered ruin, one only remained habitable. Above the rooms occupied by Mrs. Borisoff and her guests was that which had imprisoned the Queen of Scots; a chamber of bare stone, with high embrasure narrowing to the slit of window which admitted daylight, and, if one climbed the sill, gave a glimpse of far mountains. Down below, deep under the roots of the tower, was the Castle's dungeon, black and deadly. Early on the morrow Helen led her friend to see these things. Then they climbed to the battlements, where the sun shone hot, and Helen pointed out the features of the vast landscape, naming heights, and little dales which pour their tributaries into the Ure, and villages lying amid the rich pasture.

"And yonder is Hawes," said Irene, pointing to the head of the dale.

"Yes; too far to see."

They did not exchange a look. Irene spoke at once of something else.

There came to lunch Mrs. Borisoff's cousin, a grouse-guest at a house some miles away. He arrived on horseback, and his approach was watched with interest by two pairs of eyes from the Castle windows. Mr. March looked well in the saddle, for he was a strong, comely man of about thirty, who lived mostly under the open sky. Irene had met him only once, and that in a drawing-room; she saw him now to greater advantage, heard him talk freely of things he understood and enjoyed, and on the whole did not dislike him. With Helen he was a favourite; she affected to make fun of him, but had confessed to Irene that she respected him more than any other of her county-family kinsfolk. As he talked of his two days' shooting, he seemed to become aware that Miss Derwent had no profound interest in this subject, and there fell from him an unexpected apology.

"Of course it isn't a very noble kind of sport," he said, with a laugh. "One is invited--one takes it in the course of things. I prefer the big game, where there's a chance of having to shoot for your life."

"I suppose one _must_ shoot something," remarked Irene, as if musing a commonplace.

March took it with good nature, like a man who cannot remember whether that point of view ever occurred to him, but who is quite willing to think about it. Indeed, he seemed more than willing to give attention to anything Miss Derwent choose to say: something of this inclination had appeared even at their first meeting, and to-day it was more marked. He showed reluctance when the hour obliged him to remount his horse. Mrs. Borisoff's hope that she might see him again before he left this part of the country received a prompt and cheerful reply.

Later, that afternoon, the two friends climbed the great hillside above the Castle, and rambled far over the moorland, to a windy height where they looked into deep wild Swaledale. Their talk was only of the scenes around them, until, on their way back, they approached a line of three-walled shelters, built of rough stone, about the height of a man. In reply to Irene's question, Helen explained the use of these structures; she did so in an off-hand way, with the proper terms, and would have passed on, but Irene stood gazing.

"What! They lie in ambush here, whilst the men drive the birds towards them, to be shot?"

"It's sport," rejoined the other indifferently.

"I see. And here are the old cartridges." A heap of them lay close by amid the ling. "I don't wonder that Mr. March seemed a little ashamed of himself."

"But surely you knew all about this sort of thing!" said Mrs. Borisoff, with a little laugh of impatience.

"No, I didn't."

She had picked up one of the cartridge-cases, and, after examining it, her eyes wandered about the vast-rolling moor. The wind sang low; the clouds sailed across the mighty dome of heaven; not a human dwelling was visible, and not a sound broke upon nature's infinite calm.

"It amazes me," Irene continued, subduing her voice.

"Incredible that men can come up here just to bang guns and see beautiful birds fall dead! One would think that what they _saw_ here would stop their hands--that this silence would fill their minds and hearts, and make it impossible!"

Her voice had never trembled with such emotion in Helen's hearing. It was not Irene's habit to speak in this way. She had the native reticence of English women, preferring to keep silence when she felt strongly, or to disguise her feeling with irony and jest. But the hour and the place overcame her; a noble passion shone in her clear eyes, and thrilled in her utterance.

"What barbarians!"

"Yet you know they are nothing of the kind," objected Helen. "At least, not all of them."

"Mr. March?--You called him, yourself, a fine barbarian, quoting from Matthew Arnold. I never before understood how true that description was."

"I assure you, it doesn't apply to him, whatever I may have said in joke. This shooting is the tradition of a certain class. It's one of the ways in which great, strong men get their necessary exercise. Some of them feel, at moments, just as you do, I've no doubt; but there they are, a lot of them together, and a man can't make himself ridiculous, you know."

"You're not like yourself in this, Helen," said Irene. "You're not speaking as you think. Another time, you'll confess it's abominable savagery, with not one good word to be said for it. And more contemptible than I ever suspected! I'm so glad I've seen this. It helps to clear my thoughts about--about things in general."

She flung away the little yellow cylinder-flung it far from her with disgust, and, as if to forget it, plucked as she walked on a spray of heath, which glowed with its purple bells among the redder ling. Helen's countenance was shadowed. She spoke no more for several minutes.

When two days had passed, March again came riding up to the Castle, and lunched with the ladies. Irene was secretly vexed. At breakfast she had suggested a whole day's excursion, which her friend persuaded her to postpone; the reason must have been Helen's private knowledge that Mr. March was coming. In consequence, the lunch fell short of perfect cheerfulness. For reasons of her own, Irene was just a little formal in her behaviour to the guest; she did not talk so well as usual, and bore herself as a girl must who wishes, without unpleasantness, to check a man's significant approaches.

In the hot afternoon, chairs were taken out into the shadow of the Castle walls, and there the three sat conversing. Someone drew near, a man, whom the careless glance of Helen's cousin took for a casual tourist about to view the ruins. Helen herself, and in the same moment, Irene, recognised Piers Otway. It seemed as though Mrs. Borisoff would not rise to welcome him; her smile was dubious, half surprised. She cast a glance at Irene, whose face was set in the austerest self-control, and thereupon not only stood up, but stepped forward with cordial greeting.

"So you have really come! Delighted to see you! Are you walking--as you said?"

"Too hot!" Piers replied, with a laugh. "I spent yesterday at York, and came on in a cowardly way by train."

He was shaking hands with Irene, who dropped a word or two of mere courtesy. In introducing him to March, Mrs. Borisoff said, "An old friend of ours," which caused her stalwart cousin to survey the dark, slimly-built man very attentively.

"We'll get you a chair, Mr. Otway----"

"No, no! Let me sit or lie here on the grass. It's all I feel fit for after the climb."

He threw himself down, nearer to Helen than to her friend, and the talk became livelier than before his arrival. Irene emerged from the taciturnity into which she had more and more withdrawn, and March, not an unobservant man, evidently noted this, and reflected upon it. He had at first regarded the new-comer with a civil aloofness, as one not of his world; presently, he seemed to ask himself to what world the singular being might belong--a man who knew how to behave himself, and whose talk implied more than common _savoir-vivre_, yet who differed in such noticeable points from an Englishman of the leisured class.

Helen was in a mischievous mood. She broached the subject of grouse, addressing to Otway an ambiguous remark which led March to ask, with veiled surprise, whether he was a sportsman.

"Mr. Otway's taste is for bigger game," she exclaimed, before Piers could reply. "He lives in hope of potting Russians on the Indian frontier."

"Well, I can sympathise with him in that," said the large-limbed man, puzzled but smiling. "He'll probably have a chance before very long."

No sooner had he spoken that a scarlet confusion glowed upon his face. In speculating about Otway, he had for the moment forgotten his cousin's name.

"I _beg_ your pardon, Helen!--What an idiot I am Of course you were joking, and I----"

"Don't, don't, don't apologise, Edward! Tell truth and shame--your Russian relatives! I like you all the better for it."

"Thank you," he answered. "And after all, there's no harm in a little fighting. It's better to fight and have done with it than keeping on plotting between compliments. Nations arc just like schoolboys, you know; there has to be a round now and then; it settles things, and is good for the blood."

Otway was biting a blade of grass; he smiled and said nothing. Mrs. Borisoff glanced from him to Irene, who also was smiling, but looked half vexed.

"How can it be good, for health or anything else?" Miss Derwent asked suddenly, turning to the speaker.

"Oh, we couldn't do without fighting. It's in human nature."

"In uncivilised human nature, yes."

"But really, you know," urged March, with good-natured deference, "it wouldn't do to civilise away pluck--courage--heroism--whatever one likes to call it."

"Of course it wouldn't. But what has pluck or heroism to do with bloodshed? How can anyone imagine that courage is only shown in fighting? I don't happen to have been in a battle, but one knows very well how easy it must be for any coward or brute, excited to madness, to become what's called a hero. Heroism is noble courage in ordinary life. Are you serious in thinking that life offers no opportunities for it?"

"Well--it's not quite the same thing----"

"Happily, not! It's a vastly better thing. Every day some braver deed is done by plain men and women--yes, women, if you please--than was ever known on the battle-field. One only hears of them now and then. On the railway--on the sea--in the hospital--in burning houses--in accidents of road and street--are there no opportunities for courage? In the commonest everyday home life, doesn't any man or woman have endless chances of being brave or a coward? And this is civilised courage, not the fury of a bull at a red rag."

Piers Otway had ceased to nibble his blade of grass; his eyes were fixed on Irene. When she had made a sudden end of speaking, when she smiled her apology for the fervour forbidden in polite converse, he still gazed at her, self-oblivious. Helen Borisoff watched him, askance.

"Let us go in and have some tea," she said, rising abruptly.

Soon after, March said good-bye, a definite good-bye; he was going to another part of England. With all the grace of his caste he withdrew from a circle, in which, temptations notwithstanding, he had not felt quite at ease. Riding down the dale through a sunny shower, he was refreshed and himself again.

"Where do you put up to-night?" asked Helen of Otway, turning to him, when the other man had gone, with a brusque familiarity.

"At the inn down in Redmire."

"And what do you do to-morrow?"

"Go to see the falls at Aysgarth, for one thing. There's been rain up on the hills; the river will be grand."

"Perhaps we shall be there."

When Piers had left them, Helen said to her friend

"I wanted to ask him to stay and dine--but I didn't know whether you would like it."

"I? I am not the hostess."

"No, but you have humours, Irene. One has to be careful."

Irene knitted her brows, and stood for a moment with face half averted.

"If I cause this sort of embarrassment," she said frankly, "I think I oughtn't to stay."

"It's easily put right, my dear girl. Answer me a simple question. If I lead Mr. Otway to suppose that his company for a few days is not disagreeable to us, shall I worry you, or not?"

"Not in the least," was the equally direct answer.

"That's better. We've always got along so well, you know, that it's annoying to feel there's something not quits understood between us. Then I shall send a note down to the inn where he's staying, to appoint a meeting at Aysgarth to-morrow. And I shall ask him to come here for the rest of the day, if he chooses."

At nightfall, the rain-clouds spread from the hills of Westmorland, and there were some hours of downpour. This did not look hopeful for the morrow, but, on the other hand, it promised a finer sight at the falls, if by chance the weather grew tolerable. The sun rose amid dropping vapours, and at breakfast-time had not yet conquered the day, but a steady brightening soon put an end to doubt. The friends prepared to set forth.

As they were entering the carriage there arrived the postman, with letters for both, which they read driving down to the dale. One of Irene's correspondents was her brother, and the contents of Eustace's letter so astonished her that she sat for a time absorbed in thought.

"No bad news, I hope?" said Helen, who had glanced quickly over the few lines from her husband, now at Ostend.

"No, but startling. You may as well read the letter."

It was written in Eustace Derwent's best style; really a very good letter, both as to composition and in the matter of feeling. After duly preparing his sister for what might come as a shock, he made known to her that he was about to marry Mrs. John Jacks, the widow of the late member of Parliament. "I can quite imagine," he proceeded, "that this may trouble your mind by exciting unpleasant memories, and perhaps may make you apprehensive of disagreeable things in the future. Pray have no such uneasiness. Only this morning I had a long talk with Arnold Jacks, who was very friendly, and indeed could not have behaved better. He spoke of you, and quite in the proper way; I was to remember him very kindly to you, if I thought the remembrance would not be unwelcome. As for my dear Marian, you will find her everything that a sister should be." Followed sundry details and promise of more information when they met again in town.

"Describe her to me," said Helen, who had a slight acquaintance with Irene's brother.

"One word does it--irreproachable. A couple of years older than Eustace, I think; John Jacks was more than twice her age, so it's only fair. The dear boy will probably give up his profession, and become an ornament of society, a model of all the proprieties. Wonderful I shan't realise it for a few days."

As they drove on to the bridge at Aysgarth, Piers Otway stood there awaiting them. They exchanged few words; the picture before their eyes, and the wild music that filled the air, imposed silence. Headlong between its high banks plunged the swollen torrent, the roaring spate; brown from its washing of the peaty moorland, and churned into flying flakes of foam. Over the worn ledges, at other times a succession of little waterfalls, rolled in resistless fury a mighty cataract; at great rocks in mid-channel it leapt with surges like those of an angry sea. The spectacle was fascinating in its grandeur, appalling in its violence; with the broad leafage of the glen arched over it in warm, still sunshine, wondrously beautiful.

They wandered some way by the river banks; then drove to other spots of which Otway spoke, lunched at a village inn, and by four o'clock returned altogether to the Castle. After tea, Piers found himself alone with Irene. Mrs. Borisoff had left the room whilst he was speaking, and so silently that for a moment he was not aware of her withdrawal. Alone with Irene, for the first time since he had known her; even at Ewell, long ago, they had never been together without companionship. There fell a silence. Piers could not lift his eyes to the face which had all day been before him, the face which seemed more than ever beautiful amid nature's beauties. He wished to thank her for the letter she had written him to St. Petersburg, but was fearful of seeming to make too much of this mark of kindness. Irene herself resumed the conversation.

"You will continue to write for the reviews, I hope?"

"I shall try to," he answered softly.

"Your Russian must be very idiomatic. I found it hard in places."

Overcome with delight, he looked at her and bent towards her.

"Mrs. Borisoff told me you had learnt. I know what that means--learning Russian in England, out of books. I began to do it at Ewell--do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember very well. Have you written anything besides these two articles?"

"Written--yes, but not published. I have written all sorts of things." His voice shook. "Even--verse."

He repented the word as soon as it was uttered. Again his eyes could not move towards hers.

"I know you have," said Irene, in the voice of one who smiles.

"I have never been sure that you knew it--that you received those verses."

"To tell you the truth, I didn't know how to acknowledge them. I never received the dedication of a poem, before or since, and in my awkwardness I put off my thanks till it was too late to send them. But I remember the lines; I think they were beautiful. Shall you ever include them in a volume?"

"I wrote no more, I am no poet. Yet if you had given a word of praise"--he laughed, as one does when emotion is too strong--"I should have written on and on, with a glorious belief in myself."

"Perhaps it was as well, then, that I said nothing. Poetry must come of itself, without praise--don't you think?"

"Yes, I lived it--or tried to live it--instead of putting it into metre."

"That's exactly what I once heard my father say about himself. And he called it consuming his own smoke."

Piers could not but join in her quiet laugh, yet he had never felt a moment less opportune for laughter. As if to prove that she purposely changed the note of their dialogue, Irene reached a volume from the table, and said in the most matter-of-fact voice:

"Here's a passage of Tolstoi that I can't make out. Be my professor, please. First of all, let me hear you read it aloud for the accent."

The lesson continued till Helen entered the room again. Irene so willed it.

CHAPTER XXXVI

She sat by her open window, which looked over the dale to the long high ridge of moors, softly drawn against a moonlit sky. Far below sounded the rushing Ure, and at moments there came upon the fitful breeze a deeper music, that of the falls at Aysgarth, miles away. It was an hour since she had bidden good-night to Helen, and two hours or more since all else in the Castle and in the cottages had been still and dark. She loved this profound quiet, this solitude guarded by the eternal powers of nature. She loved the memories and imaginings borne upon the stillness of these grey old towers.

The fortress of warrior-lords, the prison of a queen, the Royalist refuge--fallen now into such placid dreaminess of age. Into the dark chamber above, desolate, legend-haunted, perchance in some moment of the night there fell through the narrow window-niche a pale moonbeam, touching the floor, the walls of stone; such light in gloom as may have touched the face of Mary herself, wakeful with her recollections and her fears. Musing it in her fancy, Irene thought of love and death.

Had it come to her at length, that love which was so strange and distant when, in ignorance, she believed it her companion? Verses in her mind, verses that would never be forgotten, however lightly she held them, sang and rang to a new melody. They were not poetry--said he who wrote them. Yet they were truth, sweetly and nobly uttered. The false, the trivial, does not so cling to memory year after year.

They had helped her to know him, these rhyming lines, or so she fancied. They shaped in her mind, slowly, insensibly, an image of the man, throughout the lapse of time when she neither saw him nor heard of him. Whether a true image how should she assure herself? She only knew that no feature of it seemed alien when compared with the impression of those two last days. Yet the picture was an ideal; the very man she could honour, love; he and no other. Did she perilously deceive herself in thinking that this ideal and the man who spoke with her, were one?

It had grown without her knowledge, apart from her will, this conception of Piers Otway. The first half-consciousness of such a thought came to her when she heard from Olga of those letters, obtained by him for a price, and given to the kinsfolk of the dead woman. An interested generosity? She had repelled the suggestion as unworthy, ignoble. Whether the giver was ever thanked, she did not know. Dr. Derwent kept cold silence on the subject, after once mentioning it to her in formal words. Thanks, undoubtedly, were due to him. To-night it pained her keenly to think that perhaps her father had said nothing.

She began to study Russian, and in secret; her impulse dark, or so obscurely hinted that it caused her no more than a moment's reverie. Looking back, she saw but one explanation of the energy, the zeal which had carried her through these labours. It shone clear on the day when a letter from Helen Borisoff told her that an article in a Russian review, just published, bore the name of Piers Otway. Thence onward, she was frank with herself. She recognised the meaning of the intellectual process which had tended to harmonise her life with that she imagined for her ideal man. There came a prompting of emotion, and she wrote the letter which Piers received.

All things were made new to her; above all, her own self. She was acting in a way which was no result of balanced purpose, yet, as she perfectly understood, involved her in the gravest responsibilities. She had no longer the excuse which palliated her conduct eight years ago; that heedlessness was innocent indeed compared with the blame she would now incur, if she excited a vain hope merely to prove her feelings, to read another chapter of life. Solemnly in this charmed stillness of midnight, she searched her heart. It did not fail under question.

A morning sleep held her so much later than usual that, before she had left her chamber, letters were brought to the door by the child who waited upon her. On one envelope she saw the Doctor's handwriting; on the other that of her cousin, Mrs. Florio. Surprised to hear from Olga, with whom she had had very little communication for a year or two, she opened that letter first.

"Dear Irene," it began, "something has lately come to my knowledge which I think I am only doing a duty in acquainting you with. It is very unpleasant, but not the first unpleasant piece of news that you and I have shared together. You remember all about Piers Otway and those letters of my poor mother's, which he said he bought for us from his horrid brother? Well, I find that he did _not_ buy them--at all events that he never paid for them. Daniel Otway is now broken-down in health, and depends on help from the other brother, Alexander, who has gone in for some sort of music-hall business! Not only did Piers _cheat_ him out of the money promised for the letters (I fear there's no other word for it), but he has utterly refused to give the man a farthing--though in good circumstances, I hear. This is all very disagreeable, and I don't like to talk about it, but as I hear Piers Otway has been seeing you, it's better you should know." She added "very kind regards," and signed herself "yours affectionately." Then came a postscript. "Mrs. A. Otway is actually on the music-hall stage herself, in short skirts!"

The paper shook in Irene's hand. She turned sick with fear and misery.

Mechanically the other letter was torn open. Dr. Derwent wrote about Eustace's engagement. It did not exactly surprise him; he had observed significant things. Nor did it exactly displease him, for since talking with Eustace and with Marian Jacks (the widow), he suspected that the match was remarkable for its fitness. Mrs. Jacks had a large fortune--well, one could resign oneself to that. "After all, Mam'zelle Wren, there's nothing to be uneasy about. Arnold Jacks is sure to marry very soon (a dowager duchess, I should say), and on that score there'll be no awkwardness. When the Wren makes a nest for herself, I shall convert this house into a big laboratory, and be at home only to bacteria."

But the Doctor, too, had a postscriptum. "Olga has been writing to me, sheer scandal, something about the letters you wot of having been obtained in a dishonest way. I won't say I believe it, or that I disbelieve it. I mention the thing only to suggest that perhaps I was right in not making any acknowledgment of that obligation. I felt that silence was the wise as well as the dignified thing--though someone disagreed with me."

When Irene entered the sitting-room, her friend had long since breakfasted.

"What's the matter?" Helen asked, seeing so pale and troubled a countenance.

"Nothing much; I overtired myself yesterday. I must keep quiet for a little."

Mrs. Borisoff herself was in no talkative frame of mind. She, too, an observer might have imagined, had some care or worry. The two very soon parted; Irene going back to her room, Helen out into the sunshine.

A malicious letter this of Olga's; the kind of letter which Irene had not thought her capable of penning. Could there be any substantial reason for such hostile feeling? Oh, how one's mind opened itself to dark suspicion, when once an evil whisper had been admitted!

She would not believe that story of duplicity, of baseness. Her very soul rejected it, declared it impossible, the basest calumny. Yet how it hurt! How it humiliated! Chiefly, perhaps, because of the evil art with which Olga had reminded her of Piers Otway's disreputable kinsmen. Could the two elder brothers be so worthless, and the younger an honest, brave man, a man without reproach--her ideal?

Irene clutched at the recollection which till now she had preferred to banish from her mind. Piers was not born of the same mother, might he not inherit his father's finer qualities, and, together with them, something noble from the woman whom his father loved? Could she but know that history The woman was a law-breaker; repeatability gave her hard names; but Irene used her own judgment in such matters, and asked only for knowledge of facts. She had as good as forgotten the irregularity of Piers Otway's birth. Whom, indeed, did it or could it concern? Her father, least of all men, would dwell upon it as a subject of reproach. But her father was very capable of pointing to Daniel and Alexander, with a shake of the head. He had a prejudice against Piers--this letter reminded her of it only too well. It might be feared that he was rather glad than otherwise of the "sheer scandal" Olga had conveyed to him.

Confident in his love of her, which would tell ill on the side of his reasonableness, his justice, she had not, during these crucial days, thought much about her father. She saw his face now, if she spoke to him of Piers. Dr. Derwent, like all men of brains, had a good deal of the aristocratic temper; he scorned the vulgarity of the vulgar; he turned in angry impatience from such sorry creatures as those two men; and often lashed with his contempt the ignoble amusements of the crowd. Olga doubtless had told him of the singer in short skirts----

She shed a few tears. The very meanness of the injury done her at this crisis of emotion heightened its cruelty.

Piers might come to the Castle this morning. Now and then she glanced from her window, if perchance she should see him approaching; but all she saw was a group of holiday-makers, the happily infrequent tourists who cared to turn from the beaten track up the dale to visit the Castle. She did not know whether Helen was at home, or had rambled away. If Piers came, and his call was announced to her, could she go forth and see him?

Not to do so, would be unjust, both to herself and to him. The relations between them demanded, of all things, honesty and courage. No little courage, it was true; for she must speak to him plainly of things from which she shrank even in communing with herself.

Yet she had done as hard a thing as this. Harder, perhaps, that interview with Arnold Jacks which set her free. Honesty and courage--clearness of sight and strength of purpose where all but every girl would have drifted dumbly the common way--had saved her life from the worst disaster: saved, too, the man whom her weakness would have wronged. Had she not learnt the lesson which life sets before all, but which only a few can grasp and profit by?

Towards midday she left her room, and went in search of Helen; not finding her within doors, she stepped out on to the sward, and strolled in the neighbourhood of the Castle. A child whom she knew approached her.

"Have you seen Mrs. Borisoff?" she asked.

"She's down at the beck, with the gentleman," answered the little girl, pointing with a smile to the deep, leaf-hidden glen half a mile away.

Irene lingered for a few minutes and went in again.

At luncheon-time Helen had not returned. The meal was delayed for her, more than a quarter of an hour. When at length she entered, Irene saw she had been hastening; but Helen's features seemed to betray some other cause of discomposure than mere unpunctuality. Having glanced at her once or twice, Irene kept an averted face. Neither spoke as they sat down to table; only when they had begun the meal did Helen ask whether her friend felt better. The reply was a brief affirmative. For the rest of the time they talked a little, absently, about trivialities; then they parted; without any arrangement for the afternoon.

Irene's mind was in that state of perilous commotion which invests with dire significance any event not at once intelligible. Alone in her chamber, she sat brooding with tragic countenance. How could Helen's behaviour be explained? If she had met Piers Otway and spent part of the morning with him, why did she keep silence about it? Why was she so late in coming home, and what had heightened her colour, given that peculiar shiftiness to her eyes?

She rose, went to Helen's door, and knocked.

"May I come in?"

"Of course--I have a letter to write by post-time."

"I won't keep you long," said Irene, standing before her friend's chair, and regarding her with grave earnestness. "Did Mr. Otway call this morning?"

"He was coming; I met him outside, and told him you weren't very well. And"--she hesitated, but went on with a harder voice and a careless smile--"we had a walk up the glen. It's very lovely, the higher part. You must go. Ask him to take you."

"I don't understand you," said Irene coldly. "Why should I ask Mr. Otway to take me?"

"I beg your pardon. You are become so critical of words and phrases. To take _us_, I'll say."

"That wouldn't be a very agreeable walk, Helen, whilst you are in this strange mood. What does it all mean? I never foresaw the possibility of misunderstandings such as this between us. Is it I who am to blame, or you? Have I offended you?"

"No, dear," was the dreamy response.

"Then why do you seem to wish to quarrel with me?"

Helen had the look of one who strugglingly overcomes a paroxysm of anger. She stood up.

"Would you leave me alone for a little, Irene? I'm not quite able to talk. I think we've both of us been doing too much--overtaxing ourselves. It has got on my nerves."

"Yes I will go," was the answer, spoken very quietly. "And to-morrow morning I will return to London."

She moved away.

"Irene!"

"Yes----?"

"I have something to tell you before you go." Helen spoke with a set face, forcing herself to meet her friend's eyes. "Mr. Otway wants an opportunity of talking with you, alone. He hoped for it this morning. As he couldn't see you, he talked about you to me--you being the only subject he could talk about. I promised to be out of the way if he came this afternoon."

"Thank you--but why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Because, as I said, things have got rather on my nerves." She took a step forward. "Will you overlook it--forget about it? Of course I should have told you before he came."

"It's strange that there should be anything to overlook or forget between _us_," said Irene, with wide pathetic eyes.

"There isn't really! It's not you and I that have got muddled--only things, circumstances. If you had been a little more chummy with me. There's a time for silence, but also a time for talking."

"Dear, there are things one _can't_ talk about, because one doesn't know what to say, even to oneself."

"I know! I know it!" replied Helen, with emphasis.

And she came still nearer, with hand held out.

"All nerves, Irene! Neuralgia of--of the common sense, my dear!"

They parted with a laugh and a quick clasp of hands.

CHAPTER XXXVII

For half an hour Irene sat idle. She was waiting, and could do nothing but wait. Then the uncertainty as to how long this suspense might hold her grew insufferable; she was afraid too, of seeing Helen again, and having to talk, when talk would be misery. A thought grew out of her unrest--a thought clear-shining amid the tumult of turbid emotions. She would go forth to meet him. He should see that she came with that purpose--that she put away all trivialities of prescription and of pride. If he were worthy, only the more would he esteem her. If she deluded herself--it lay in the course of Fate.

His way up from Redmire was by the road along which she had driven on the evening of her arrival, the road that dipped into a wooded glen, where a stream tumbled amid rocks and boulders, over smooth-worn slabs and shining pebbles, from the moor down to the river of the dale. He might not come this way. She hoped--she trusted Destiny.

She stood by the crossing of the beck. The flood of yesterday had fallen; the water was again shallow at this spot, but nearly all the stepping-stones had been swept away. For help at such times, a crazy little wooden bridge spanned the current a few yards above. Irene brushed through the long grass and the bracken, mounted on to the bridge, and, leaning over the old bough which formed a rail, let the voice of the beck soothe her impatience.

Here one might linger for hours, in perfect solitude; very rarely in the day was this happy stillness broken by a footfall, a voice, or the rumbling of a peasant's cart. A bird twittered, a breeze whispered in the branches; ever and ever the water kept its hushing note.

But now someone was coming. Not with audible footstep; not down the road at which Irene frequently glanced; the intruder approached from the lower part of the glen, along the beckside, now walking in soft herbage, now striding from stone to stone, sometimes lifting the bough of a hazel or a rowan that hung athwart his path. He drew near to the crossing. He saw the figure on the bridge, and for a moment stood at gaze.

Irene was aware of someone regarding her. She moved. He stood below, the ripple-edge of the water touching his foot. Upon his upturned face, dark eyes wide in joy and admiration, firm lips wistfully subduing their smile, the golden sunlight shimmered through overhanging foliage. She spoke.

"Everything around is beautiful, but this most of all."

"There is nothing more beautiful," he answered, "in all the dales."

The words had come to her easily and naturally, after so much trouble as to what the first words should be. His look was enough. She scorned her distrust, scorned the malicious gossip that had excited it. Her mind passed into consonance with the still, warm hour, with the loveliness of all about her.

"I haven't been that way yet." She pointed up the glen. "Will you come?"

"Gladly! I was here with Mrs. Borisoff this morning, and wished so much you had been with us."

Irene stepped down from the bridge down to the beckside. The briefest shadow of annoyance had caused her to turn her face away; there followed contentment that he spoke of the morning, at once and so frankly. She was able to talk without restraint, uttering her delight at each new picture as they went along. They walked very slowly, ever turning to admire, stopping to call each other's attention with glowing words. At a certain point, they were obliged to cross the water, their progress on this side barred by natural obstacles. It was a crossing of some little difficulty for Irene, the stones being rugged, and rather far apart; Piers guided her, and at the worst spot held out his hand.

"Jump! I won't let you fall."

She sprang with a happy girlish laugh to his side, and withdrew her hand very gently.

"Here is a good place to rest," she said, seating herself on a boulder. And Piers sat down at a little distance.

The bed of the torrent was full of great stones, very white, rounded and smoothed by the immemorial flow, by their tumbling and grinding in time of spate; they formed innumerable little cataracts, with here and there a broad plunge of foam-streaked water, perilously swift and deep. By the bank the current spread into a large, still pool, of colour a rich brown where the sunshine touched it, and darkly green where it lay beneath spreading branches; everywhere limpid, showing the pebbles or the sand in its cool depths. Infinite were the varyings of light and shade, from a dazzling gleam on the middle water, to the dense obscurity of leafy nooks. On either hand was a wood, thick with undergrowth; great pines, spruces, and larches, red-berried rowans, crowding on the steep sides of the ravine; trees of noble stature, shadowing fern and flower, towering against the sunny blue. Just below the spot where Piers and Irene rested, a great lichened hazel stretched itself all across the beck; in the upward direction a narrowing vista, filled with every tint of leafage, rose to the brown of the moor and the azure of the sky. All about grew tall, fruiting grasses, and many a bright flower; clusters of pink willow-weed, patches of yellow ragwort, the perfumed meadowsweet, and, amid bracken and bramble, the purple shining of a great campanula.

On the open moor, the sun blazed with parching heat; here was freshness as of spring, the waft of cool airs, the scent of verdure moistened at the root.

"Once upon a time," said Otway, when both had been listening to their thoughts, "I fancied myself as unlucky a man as walked the earth. I've got over that."

Irene did not look at him; she waited for the something else which his voice promised.

"Think of my good fortune in meeting you this afternoon. If I had gone to the Castle another way, I should have missed you; yet I all but did go by the fields. And there was nothing I desired so much as to see you somewhere--by yourself."

The slight failing of his voice at the end helped Irene to speak collectedly.

"Chance was in my favour, too. I came down to the beck, hoping I might meet you."

She saw his hand move, the fingers clutch together. Before he could say anything, she continued:

"I want to tell you of an ill-natured story that has reached my ears. Not to discuss it; I know it is untrue. Your two brothers--do you know that they speak spitefully of you?"

"I didn't know it. I don't think I have given them cause."

"I am very sure you haven't. But I want you to know about it, and I shall tell you the facts. After the death of my aunt, Mrs. Hannaford, you got from the hands of Daniel Otway a packet of her letters; he bargained with you, and you paid his price, wishing those letters to be seen by my father and my cousin Olga, whose minds they would set at rest. Now, Daniel Otway is telling people that you never paid the sum you promised him, and that, being in poverty, he vainly applies to you for help."

She saw his hand grasp a twig that hung near him, and drag it rudely down; she did not look at his face.

"I should have thought," Piers answered with grave composure, "that nothing Daniel Otway said could concern me. I see it isn't so. It must have troubled you, for you to speak of it."

"It has; I thought about it. I rejected it as a falsehood."

"There's a double falsehood. I paid him the price he asked, on the day he asked it, and I have since"--he checked himself--"I have not refused him help in his poverty."

Irene's heart glowed within her. Even thus, and not otherwise, would she have desired him to refute the slander. It was a test she had promised herself; she could have laughed for joy. Her voice betrayed this glad emotion.

"Let him say what he will; it doesn't matter now. But how comes it that he is poor?"

"That I should like to know." Piers threw a pebble into the still, brown water near him. "Five years ago, he came into a substantial sum of money. I suppose--it went very quickly. Daniel is not exactly a prudent man."

"I imagine not," remarked Irene, allowing herself a glimpse of his countenance, which she found to be less calm than his tone. "Let us have done with him. Five years ago," she added, with soft accents, "some of that money ought to have been yours, and you received nothing."

"Nothing was legally due to me," he answered, in a voice lower than hers.

"That I know. I mention it--you will forgive me?--because I have sometimes feared that you might explain to yourself wrongly my failure to reply when you sent me those verses, long ago. I have thought, lately, that you might suppose I knew certain facts at that time. I didn't; I only learnt them afterwards. At no time would it have made any difference."

Piers could not speak.

"Look!" said Irene, in a whisper, pointing.

A great dragon-fly, a flash of blue, had dropped on to the surface of the pool, and lay floating. As they watched it rose, to drop again upon a small stone amid a shallow current; half in, half out of, the sunny water, it basked.

"Oh, how lovely everything is!" exclaimed Irene, in a voice that quivered low. "How perfect a day!"

"It was weather like this when I first saw you," said Piers. "Earlier, but just as bright. My memory of you has always lived in sunshine. I saw you first from my window; you were standing in the garden at Ewell; I heard your voice. Do you remember telling the story of Thibaut Rossignol?"

"Oh yes, yes!"

"Is he still with your father?"

"Thibaut? Why, Thibaut is an institution. I can't imagine our house without him. Do you know that he always calls me Mademoiselle Irene?"

"Your name is beautiful in any language. I wonder how many times I have repeated it to myself? And thought, too, so often of its meaning; longed, for _that_--and how vainly!"

"Say the name--now," she faltered.

"Irene!--Irene!"

"Why, you make music of it! I never knew how musical it sounded. Hush! look at that thing of light and air!"

The dragon-fly had flashed past them. This way and that it darted above the shining water, then dropped once more, to float, to sail idly with its gossamer wings.

Piers stole nearer. He sat on a stone by her side.

"Irene!"

"Yes. I like the name when you say it."

"May I touch your hand?"

Still gazing at the dragon-fly, as if careless of what she did, she held her hand to him. Piers folded it in both his own.

"May I hold it as long as I live?"

"Is that a new thought of yours?" she asked, in a voice that shook as it tried to suggest laughter in her mind.

"The newest! The most daring and the most glorious I ever had."

"Why, then I have been mistaken," she said softly, for an instant meeting his eyes. "I fancied I owed you something for a wrong I did, without meaning it, more than eight years gone by."

"That thought had come to you?" Piers exclaimed, with eyes gleaming.

"Indeed it had. I shall be more than half sorry if I have to lose it."

"How foolish I was! What wild, monstrous folly! How could you have dreamt for a moment that such a one as I was could dare to love you?--Irene, you did me no wrong. You gave me the ideal of my life--something I should never lose from my heart and mind--something to live towards! Not a hope; hope would have been madness. I have loved you without hope; loved you because I had found the only one I could love--the one I must love--on and on to the end."

She laid her free hand upon his that clasped the other, and bowed him to her reasoning mood.

"Let me speak of other things--that have to be made plain between you and me. First of all, a piece of news. I have just heard that my brother is going to marry Mrs. John Jacks."

Piers was mute with astonishment. It was so long since he had seen Mrs. Jacks, and he pictured her as a woman much older than Eustace Derwent. His clearest recollection of her was that remark she made at the luncheon-table about the Irish, that they were so "sentimental"; it had blurred her beauty and her youth in his remembrance.

"Yes, Eustace is going to marry her; and I shouldn't wonder if the marriage turns out well. It leads to the disagreeable thing I have to talk about. You know that I engaged myself to Arnold Jacks. I did so freely, thinking I did right. When the time of the marriage drew near, I had learnt that I had done _wrong_. Not that I wished to be the wife of anyone else. I loved nobody; I did not love the man I was pretending to. As soon as I knew that--what was I to do? To marry him was a crime--no less a crime for its being committed every day. I took my courage in both hands. I told him I did not love him, I would not marry him. And--I ran away."

The memory made her bosom heave, her cheeks flush.

"Magnificent!" commented the listener, with a happy smile.

"Ah! but I didn't do it very well. I treated him badly--yes, inconsiderately, selfishly. The thing had to be done--but there were ways of doing it. Unfortunately I had got to resent my captivity, and I spoke to him as if _he_ were to blame. From the point of view of delicacy, perhaps he was; he should have released me at once, and that he wouldn't. But I was too little regardful of what it meant to him--above all to his pride. I have so often reproached myself. I do it now for the last time. There!" She picked up a pebble to fling away. "It is gone! We speak of the thing no more."

A change was coming upon the glen. The sun had passed; it shone now only on the tree-tops. But the sky above was blue and warm as ever.

"Another thing," she pursued, more gravely. "My father----"

Piers waited a moment, then said with eyes downcast:

"He does not think well of me?"

"That is my grief, and my trouble. However, not a serious trouble. Of you, personally, he has no dislike; it was quite the opposite when he met you; when you dined at our house--you remember? He said things of you I am not going to repeat, sir. It was only after the disaster which involved your name. Then he grew prejudiced."

"Who can wonder?"

"It will pass over. My father is no stage-tyrant. If _he_ is not open to reason, what man living is? And no man has a tenderer heart. He was all kindness and forbearance and understanding when I did a thing which might well have made him angry. Some day you shall see the letter he wrote me, when I had run away to Paris. In it, he spoke, as never to me before, of his own marriage--of his love for my mother. Every word remains in my memory, but I can't trust my voice to repeat them, and perhaps I ought not--even to you."

"May I go to him, and speak for myself?"

"Yes--but not till I have seen him."

"Can't I spare you that?" said Piers, in a voice which, for the first time, sounded his triumphant manhood. "Do you think I fear a meeting with your father, or doubt of its result? If I had gone merely on my own account, to try to remove his prejudice and win his regard, it would have been a different thing; indeed, I could never have done that; I felt too keenly his reasons for disliking me. But now! In what man's presence should I shrink, and feel myself unworthy? You have put such words into my heart as will gain my cause for me the moment they are spoken. I have no false shame--no misgivings. I shall speak the truth of myself and you, and your father will hear me."

Irene listened with the love-light in her hazel eyes; the face she turned upon him brought back a ray of sunshine to the slowly shadowing glen.

"I will think till to-morrow," she said. "Come to the Castle to-morrow morning, and I shall have settled many things. But now we must go; Helen will wonder what has become of me; I didn't tell her I was going out."

He bent over her hand; she did not withdraw it from him as they walked through the bracken, and beneath the green boughs, and picked their way over the white stones of the rushing beck.

At the road, they parted.

An hour after sunset, Piers was climbing the hillside towards the Castle, now a looming shape against a sky still duskily purpled from the west. He climbed slowly, doubting at each step whether to go nearer, or to wave his hand and turn. Still, he approached. In the cottages a few lights were seen; but no one moved; there was no voice. His own footstep on the sward fell soundless.

He stood before the tower which was inhabited, and looked at the dim-lighted windows. To the entrance led a long flight of steps, and as he gazed through the gloom, he seemed to discern a figure standing there, before the doorway. He was not mistaken; the figure moved, descended. Motionless, he saw it turn towards him. Then he knew the step, the form; he sprang forward.

"Irene!"

"You have come to say good-night? See how our thoughts chime; I guessed you would."

Her voice had a soft, caressing tremor; her hand sought his.

"Irene! You have given me a new life, a new soul!"

Her lips were near as she answered him.

"Rest from your sorrows, my dearest. I love you! I love you!"

He was alone again in the darkness, on the hillside. He heard the voice of the far-off river, and to his rapturous mood it sounded as a moaning, brought a sudden sadness. All at once, he thought amid his triumph of those unhappy ones whom the glory of love would never bless; those, men and women, born to a vain longing such as he had known, doomed to the dread solitude from which he by miracle had been saved. His heart swelled, and his eyes were hot with tears.

But as he went down to the dale, the calm of the silent hour crept over him. He whispered the beloved name, and it gave him peace; such peace as follows upon the hallowing of a profound passion, justified of reason, and proof under the hand of time.

George Gissing