Irene’s heart glowed within her.  Even thus, and not otherwise, would she have desired him to refute the slander.  It was a test she had promised herself; she could have laughed for joy.  Her voice betrayed this glad emotion.

“Let him say what he will; it doesn’t matter now.  But how comes it that he is poor?”

“That I should like to know.”  Piers threw a pebble into the still, brown water near him.  “Five years ago, he came into a substantial sum of money.  I suppose—­it went very quickly.  Daniel is not exactly a prudent man.”

“I imagine not,” remarked Irene, allowing herself a glimpse of his countenance, which she found to be less calm than his tone.  “Let us have done with him.  Five years ago,” she added, with soft accents, “some of that money ought to have been yours, and you received nothing.”

“Nothing was legally due to me,” he answered, in a voice lower than hers.

“That I know.  I mention it—­you will forgive me?—­because I have sometimes feared that you might explain to yourself wrongly my failure to reply when you sent me those verses, long ago.  I have thought, lately, that you might suppose I knew certain facts at that time.  I didn’t; I only learnt them afterwards.  At no time would it have made any difference.”

Piers could not speak.

“Look!” said Irene, in a whisper, pointing.

A great dragon-fly, a flash of blue, had dropped on to the surface of the pool, and lay floating.  As they watched it rose, to drop again upon a small stone amid a shallow current; half in, half out of, the sunny water, it basked.

“Oh, how lovely everything is!” exclaimed Irene, in a voice that quivered low.  “How perfect a day!”

“It was weather like this when I first saw you,” said Piers.  “Earlier, but just as bright.  My memory of you has always lived in sunshine.  I saw you first from my window; you were standing in the garden at Ewell; I heard your voice.  Do you remember telling the story of Thibaut Rossignol?”

“Oh yes, yes!”

“Is he still with your father?”

“Thibaut?  Why, Thibaut is an institution.  I can’t imagine our house without him.  Do you know that he always calls me Mademoiselle Irene?”

“Your name is beautiful in any language.  I wonder how many times I have repeated it to myself?  And thought, too, so often of its meaning; longed, for that—­and how vainly!”

“Say the name—­now,” she faltered.

“Irene!—­Irene!”

“Why, you make music of it!  I never knew how musical it sounded.  Hush! look at that thing of light and air!”

The dragon-fly had flashed past them.  This way and that it darted above the shining water, then dropped once more, to float, to sail idly with its gossamer wings.

Piers stole nearer.  He sat on a stone by her side.

“Irene!”

“Yes.  I like the name when you say it.”

“May I touch your hand?”