An hour later, as he sat writing in his study, Mrs. Hannaford brought in a parcel, which had just arrived for him.

“Ah, what’s that?” he asked, looking up with interest.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered his wife.  “Something with blood on it, I dare say”

Hannaford uttered a crowing laugh of scorn and amusement.

Through the afternoon Piers Otway sat in the garden with the ladies.  After tea he again went for a walk with Olga and Irene.  After dinner he lingered so significantly that Mrs. Hannaford invited him to the drawing-room, and with unconcealed pleasure he followed her thither.  When at length he had taken his leave for the night, there was a short silence, Mrs. Hannaford glancing from her daughter to Irene, and smiling reflectively.

“Mr. Otway seems to be taking a holiday,” she said at length.

“Yes, so it seemed to me,” fell from Olga, who caught her mother’s eye.

“It’ll do him good,” was Miss Derwent’s remark.  She exchanged no glance with the others, and seemed to be thinking of something else.

Next morning, though the sun shone brilliantly, she did not appear in the garden before breakfast.  From a window above, eyes were watching, watching in vain.  At the meal Irene was her wonted self, but she did not enter into conversation with Otway.  The young man had grown silent again.

Heavily he went up to his room.  Mechanically he seated himself at the table.  But, instead of opening books, he propped his head upon his hands, and so sat for a long, long time.

When thoughts began to shape themselves (at first he did not think, but lived in a mere tumult of emotions) he recalled Irene’s question:  what career had he really in view?  A dull, respectable clerkship, with two or three hundred a year, and the chance of dreary progress by seniority till it was time to retire on a decent pension?  That, he knew, was what the Civil Service meant.  The far, faint possibility of some assistant secretaryship to some statesman in office; really nothing else.  His inquiries had apprised him of this delightful state of things, but he had not cared.  Now he did care.  He was beginning to understand himself better.

In truth, he had never looked forward beyond a year or two.  Ambition, desires, he possessed in no common degree, but as a vague, unexamined impulse.  He had dreamt of love, but timidly, tremulously; that was for the time to come.  He had dreamt of distinction; that, also, must be patiently awaited.  In the meantime, labour.  He enjoyed intellectual effort; he gloried in the amassing of mental riches.

    “To follow Knowledge like a sinking star
    Beyond the
    utmost bound of human thought—­”

these lines were frequently in his mind, and helped to shape his enthusiasm.  Consciously he subdued a great part of himself, binding his daily life in asceticism.  He would not live in London because he dreaded its temptations.  Gladly he adhered to his father’s principles in the matter of food and drink; this helped him to subdue his body, or at least he thought so.  He was happiest when, throwing himself into bed after some fourteen hours of hard reading, he felt the stupor of utter weariness creep upon him, with certainty of oblivion until the next sunrise.