He all but hastened after her, to apologise; but the irritable impulse overcame him again, and he had to pace the room till his nerves grew steady.

Very soon after it was dark he gave up the effort to read, and went to bed.  A good night’s sleep restored him.  He rose with the sun, felt the old appetite for work, and when the breakfast bell rang had redeemed more than three good hours.  He was able now to face Miss Derwent, or anyone else.  Indeed, that young lady hardly came into his mind before he met her downstairs.  At the introduction he behaved with his natural reserve, which had nothing, as a rule, of awkwardness.  Irene was equally formal, though a smile at the corner of her lips half betrayed a mischievous thought.  They barely spoke to each other, and at table Irene took no heed of him.

But with the others she talked as brightly as usual, managing, none the less, to do full justice to the meal.  Miss Derwent’s vigour of mind and body was not sustained on air, and she never affected a delicate appetite.  There was still something of the healthy schoolgirl in her manner.  Otway glanced at her once or twice, but immediately averted his eyes—­with a slight frown, as if the light had dazzled him.

She was talking of Finland, and mentioned the name of her father’s man-servant, Thibaut.  It entered several times into the narrative, and always with an approving epithet, the excellent Thibaut, the brave Thibaut.

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Hannaford, presently, “do tell Mr. Otway the story of Thibaut.”

“Yes, do!” urged Olga.

Piers raised his eyes to the last speaker, and moved them timidly towards Irene.  She smiled, meeting his look with a sort of merry satisfaction.

“Mr. Otway is occupied with serious thoughts,” was her good-humoured remark.

“I should much like to hear the story of Thibaut,” said Piers, bending forward a little.

“Would you?  You shall—­Thibaut Rossignol; delightful name, isn’t it?  And one of the most delightful of men, though only a servant, and the son of a village shopkeeper.  It begins fifteen years ago, just after the Franco-Prussian War.  My father was taking a holiday in eastern France, and he came one day to a village where an epidemic of typhoid was raging. Tant mieux!  Something to do; some help to be given.  If you knew my father—­but you will understand.  He offered his services to the overworked couple of doctors and was welcomed.  He fought the typhoid day and night—­if you knew my father!  Well, there was a bad case in a family named Rossignol:  a boy of twelve.  What made it worse was that two elder brothers had been killed in the war, and the parents sat in despair by the bedside of their only remaining child.  The father was old and very shaky; the mother much younger, but she had suffered dreadfully from the death of her two boys—­you should hear my father tell it!  I make a hash of it; when he tells it people cry.  Madame