A passion of disgust and hatred took hold on Piers as he remembered the meeting in Piccadilly.

“You mean to say you have put yourself into that fellow’s power?” he exclaimed.

“Not willingly!  Oh, not willingly!  I meant only kindness to him.  Yes, I have been weak, I know, and so foolish!  It has gone on so long.—­You remember when I first saw him, at Ewell?  I liked him, just as a friend.  Of course I behaved foolishly.  It was my miserable life—­you know what my life was.  But nothing happened—­I mean, I never thought of him for a moment as anything but an ordinary friend —­until I had my legacy.”

The look on the listener’s face checked her.

“I begin to understand,” said Piers, with bitterness.

“No, no!  Don’t say that—­don’t speak like that!”

“It’s not you I am thinking of, Mrs. Hannaford.  As soon as money comes in—.  But tell me plainly.  I have perfect confidence in what you say, indeed I have.”

“It does me good to hear you say that!  I can tell you all, now that I have begun.  It is true, he did ask me to go away with him, again and again.  But he had no right to do that—­I was foolish in showing that I liked him.  Again and again I forbade him ever to see me; I tried so hard to break off!  It was no use.  He always wrote, wherever I was, sending his letters to Dr. Derwent to be forwarded.  He made me meet him at all sorts of places—­using threats at last.  Oh, what I have gone through!”

“No doubt,” said Piers gently, “you have lent him money?”

She reddened again; her head sank.

“Yes—­I have lent him money, when he was in need.  Just before the death of your father.”

“Once only?”

“Once—­or twice——­”

“To be sure.  Lately, too, I daresay?”

“Yes——­”

“Then you quite understand his character?”

“I do now,” Mrs. Hannaford replied wretchedly.  “But I must tell you more.  If it were only a suspicion of my husband’s I should hardly care at all.  But someone must have betrayed me to him, and have told deliberate falsehoods.  I am accused—­it was when I was at the seaside once—­and he came to the same hotel—­Oh, the shame, the shame!”

She covered her face with her hands, and turned away.

“Why,” cried Piers, in wrath, “that fellow is quite capable of having betrayed you himself.  I mean, of lying about you for his own purposes.”

“You think he could be so wicked?”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment.  He has done his best to persuade you to ruin yourself for him, and he thinks, no doubt, that if you are divorced, nothing will stand between him and you—­in other words, your money.”

“He said, when I saw him yesterday, that now it had come to this, I had better take that step at once.  And when I spoke of my innocence, he asked who would believe it?  He seemed sorry; really he did.  Perhaps he is not so bad as one fears?”