He went back to his lonely home, back to the echoing emptiness, the listening dark.  He entered again the great hall where Sir Beverley had been wont to sit and wait for him.

Victor was on the watch.  He glided apologetically forward with shining, observant eyes upon his young master’s weary face.

“Monsieur Pierre!” he said insinuatingly.

Piers looked at him heavily.  “Well?”

“I have put some refreshment for you in the dining-room.  It is more—­more comfortable,” said Victor, gently indicating the open door.  “Will you not—­when you have eaten—­go to bed, mon cher, et peut-etre dormir?”

Very wistfully the little man proffered his suggestion.  His eyes followed Piers’ movements with the dumb worship of an animal.

“Oh yes, I’ll go to bed,” said Piers.

He turned towards the dining-room and entered.  There was no elation in his step; rather he walked as a man who carries a heavy burden, and Victor marked the fact with eyes of keen anxiety.

He followed him in and poured out a glass of wine, setting it before him with a professional adroitness that did not conceal his solicitude.

Piers picked up the glass almost mechanically, and in doing so caught sight of some letters lying on the table.

“Oh, damn!” he said wearily.  “How many more?”

There were bundles of them on the study writing-table.  They poured in by every post.

Victor groaned commiseratingly.  “I will take them away, yes?” he suggested.  “You will read them in the morning—­when you have slept.”

“Yes, take ’em away!” said Piers.  “Stay a minute!  What’s that top one?  I’ll look at that.”

He took up the envelope.  It was addressed in a man’s square, firm writing to “Piers Evesham, Esq., Rodding Abbey.”

“Someone who doesn’t know,” murmured Piers, and slit it open with a sense of relief.  Some of the letters of condolence that he had received had been as salt rubbed into a wound.

He took out the letter and glanced at the signature:  “Edmund Crowther!”

Suddenly a veil seemed to be drawn across his eyes.  He looked up with a sharp, startled movement, and through a floating mist he saw his grandmother’s baffling smile from the canvas on the wall.  The blood was singing in his ears.  He clenched his hands involuntarily.  Crowther!  He had forgotten Crowther!  And Crowther knew—­how much?

But he had Crowther’s promise of secrecy, so—­after all—­what had he to fear?  Nothing—­nothing!  Yet he felt as if a devil were laughing somewhere in the room.  They had caught him, they had caught him, there at the very gates of deliverance.  They were dragging him back to his place of torment.  He could hear the clanking of the chains which he had so nearly burst asunder, could feel them coiling cold about his heart.  For he also was bound by a promise, the keeping of which meant utter destruction to all he held good in life.