“I promised he should be sent for.  Will you do it, Olga?”

“It is already done,” Olga answered.  “Did she forget?  One of the things I went out for was to telegraph to him.”

They gazed at each other with distressful eyes.

“Oh, what does the man deserve who has caused tills?” exclaimed Olga, who herself began to look ill.  “It’s dreadful!  I am afraid to go into the room.  If I had someone here to live with me!”

Irene’s instinct was to offer to come, but she remembered the difficulties.  Her duties at home were obstacles sufficient.  She had to content herself with promising to call as often as possible.

Returning to Bryanston Square, she thought with annoyance of the possibility that her father and Piers Otway might come face to face in that house.  Never till now had she taxed her father with injustice.  It seemed to her an intolerable thing that the blameless man should be made to share in obloquy merited by his brother.  And what memory was this which awoke in her?  Did not she herself once visit upon him a fault in which he had little if any part?  She recalled that evening, long ago, at Queen’s Gate, when she was offended by the coarse behaviour of Piers Otway’s second brother.  True, there was something else that moved her censure on that occasion, but she would scarcely have noticed it save for the foolish incident at the door.  Fortune was not his friend.  She thought of the circumstances of his birth, which had so cruelly wronged him when Jerome Otway died.  Now, more likely than not, her father would resent his coming to Mrs. Hannaford’s, would see in it something suspicious, a suggestion of base purpose.

“I can’t stand that!” Irene exclaimed to herself.  “If he is calumniated, I shall defend him, come of it what may!”

At luncheon, Dr. Derwent was grave and disinclined to converse.  On learning where Irene had been, he nodded, making no remark.  It was a bad sign that his uneasiness could no longer be combated with a dry joke.

As three o’clock drew near, Irene made no preparation for going out.  She sat in the drawing-room, unoccupied, and was found thus when Arnold Jacks entered.

“You got my note?” he began, with a slight accent of surprise.

Irene glanced at him, and perceived that he did not wear his wonted countenance.  This she had anticipated, with an uneasiness which now hardened in her mind to something like resentment.

“Yes.  I hoped you would excuse me.  I have a little headache.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

He was perfectly suave.  He looked at her with a good-natured anxiety.  Irene tried to smile.

“You won’t mind if I leave all that to you?  Your judgment is quite enough.  If you really like the house, take it at once.  I shall be delighted.”

“It’s rather a responsibility, you know.  Suppose we wait till to-morrow?”

Irene’s nerves could not endure an argument.  She gave a strange laugh, and exclaimed: