Just as tea was being served, there sounded a voice welcome to no one present, that of Lee Hannaford.  He came forward with his wonted air of preoccupation; a well-built man, in the prime of life, carefully dressed, his lips close-set, his eyes seemingly vacant, but in reality very attentive; a pinched ironical smile meant for cordiality.  After greetings, he stood before Miss Derwent’s chair conversing with her; a cup of tea in his steady hand, his body just bent, his forehead curiously wrinkled—­a habit of his when he talked for civility’s sake and nothing else.  Hannaford could never be at ease in the presence of his wife and daughter if others were there to observe him; he avoided speaking to them, or, if obliged, did so with awkward formality.  Indeed, he was not fond of the society of women, and grew less so every year.  His tone with regard to them was marked with an almost puritanical coldness; he visited any feminine breach of the proprieties with angry censure.  Yet, before his marriage, he had lived, if anything, more laxly than the average man, and to his wife he had confessed (strange memory nowadays), that he owed to her a moral redemption.  His morality, in fact, no one doubted; the suspicions Mrs. Hannaford had once entertained when his coldness to her began, she now knew to be baseless.  Absorbed in meditations upon bloodshed and havoc, he held high the ideal of chastity, and, in company agreeable to him, could allude to it as the safeguard of civil life.

When he withdrew into the house, Mrs. Hannaford followed him.  Olga, always nervous when her father was near, sat silent.  Piers Otway, with a new reluctance, was rising to return to his studies, when Miss Derwent checked him with a look.

“What a perfect afternoon!”

“It is, indeed,” he murmured, his eyes falling.

“Olga, are you too tired for another walk?”

“I?  Oh, no!  I should enjoy it.”

“Do you think”—­Irene looked roguishly at her cousin—­“Mr. Otway would forgive us if we begged him to come, too?”

Olga smiled, and glanced at the young man with certainty that he would excuse himself.

“We can but ask,” she said.

And Piers, to her astonishment, at once assented.  He did so with sudden colour in his cheeks, avoiding Olga’s look.

So they set forth together; and, little by little, Piers grew remarkably talkative.  Miss Derwent mentioned his father, declared an interest in Jerome Otway, and this was a subject on which Piers could always discourse to friendly hearers.  This evening he did so with exceptional fervour, abounded in reminiscences, rose at moments to enthusiasm.  His companions were impressed; to Irene it was an unexpected revelation of character.  She had imagined young Otway dry and rather conventional, perhaps conceited; she found him impassioned and an idealist, full of hero-worship, devoted to his father’s name and fame.

“And he lives all the year round in that out-of-the-way place?” she asked.  “I must make a pilgrimage to Hawes.  Would he be annoyed?  I could tell him about his old friends at Helsingfors——­”