“But it is true.  And Olga’s letter to me, in which she mentions it; gives hope that that is the end of their engagement.  Naturally, the poor child won’t say it in so many words, but it is to be read between the lines.  What’s more, she is willing to come for her holiday with me!  It has made me very happy!—­I told you I was going to Malvern; my brother thinks that is most likely to do me good.  Irene will go down with me, and stay a day or two, and then I hope to have Olga.  It is delightful!  I hadn’t dared to hope.  Perhaps we shall really come together again, after this dreary time!”

Piers was listening, but with a look which had become uneasily preoccupied.

“I am as glad, almost, as you can be,” he said.  “Malvern, I never was there.”

“So healthy, my brother says!  And Shakespeare’s country, you know; we shall go to Stratford, which I have never seen.  I have a feeling that I really shall get better.  Everything is more hopeful.”

Piers recalled Olga’s mysterious hints about her mother.  Glancing at the worn face, with its vivid eyes, he could easily conceive that this ill-health had its cause in some grave mental trouble.

“Have you met your brother?” she asked.

“My brother?  Oh no!” was the careless reply.  Then on a sudden thought, Piers added, “You don’t keep up your acquaintance with him, do you?”

“Oh—­I have seen him—­now and then——­”

There was a singular hesitancy in her answer to the abrupt question.  Piers, preoccupied as he was, could not but remark Mrs. Hannaford’s constraint, almost confusion.  At once it struck him that Daniel had been borrowing money of her, and the thought aroused strong indignation.  His own hundred and fifty pounds he had never recovered, for all Daniel’s fine speeches, and notwithstanding the fact that he had taken suggestive care to let the borrower know his address in.  Russia.  Rapidly he turned in his mind the question whether he ought not to let Mrs. Hannaford know of Daniel’s untrustworthiness; but before he could decide, she launched into another subject.

“So this is to be your place of business?  Here you will sit day after day.  If good wishes could help, how you would flourish I Is it orthodox to pray for a friend’s success in business?”

“Why not?  Provided you add—­so long as he is guilty of no rascality.”

“That, you will never be.”

“Why, to tell you the truth, I shouldn’t know how to go about it.  Not everyone who wishes becomes a rascal in business.  It’s difficult enough for me to pursue commerce on the plain, honest track; knavery demands an expertness altogether beyond me.  Wherefore, let us give thanks for my honest stupidity!”

They chatted a while of these things.  Then Piers, grasping his courage, uttered what was burning within him.

“When is Miss Derwent to be married?”

Mrs. Hannaford’s eyes escaped his hard look.  She murmured that no date had yet been settled.