“Do you think,” he asked, with tremulous, sudden speech, “that I might call at Dr. Derwent’s?”

“Why not?” was the answer, but given with troubled countenance.  “You mean”—­she smiled—­“call upon Miss Derwent.  There would be no harm; she is the lady of the house, at present.”

“Would she be annoyed?”

“I don’t see why.  But of course I can’t answer for another person in such things.”

Their eyes met.  Mrs. Hannaford gazed at him sadly for an instant, shook her head, and turned away.  Piers went back to lonely misery.

Early next day he stole from the house, and went to London.  His business was at the tailor’s; he ordered a suit of ceremony—­the frock coat on which his brother Daniel had so pathetically insisted —­and begged that it might be ready at the earliest possible moment.  Next he made certain purchases in haberdashery.  Through it all, he had a most oppressive feeling of self-contempt, which—­ Piers was but one-and-twenty—­he did not try to analyze.  Every shop-mirror which reflected him seemed to present a malicious caricature; he hurried away on to the pavement, small, ignoble, silly.  His heart did battle, and at moments assailed him in a triumph of heroic desire; but then again came the sinking moments, the sense of a grovelling fellowship with people he despised.

It was raining.  His shopping done, he entered an omnibus, which took him as far as the Marble Arch; thence, beneath his umbrella, he walked in search of Bryanston Square.  Here was Dr. Derwent’s house.  Very much like a burglar, a beginner at the business, making survey of his field, he moved timidly into the Square, and sought the number; having found it with unexpected suddenness, he hurried past.  To be detected here would be dreadful; he durst not go to the opposite side, lest Irene should perchance be at a window; yet he wanted to observe the house, and did, from behind his umbrella, when a few doors away.

Never had he known what it was to feel such an insignificant mortal.  Standing here in the rain, he saw no distinction between himself and the ragged, muddy crossing-sweeper; alike, they were lost in the huge welter of common London.  On the other hand, there in the hard-fronted, exclusive-looking house sat Irene Derwent, a pearl of women, the prize of wealth, distinction, and high manliness.  What was this wild dream he had been harbouring?  Like a chill wind, reality smote him in the face; he turned away, saying to himself that he was cured of folly.

On the journey home he shaped a project.  He would seek an interview with the head of the City house in which he had spent so much time and worked so conscientiously, a quite approachable man as he knew from experience, and would ask if he might be allowed to re-enter their service not, however, in London, but in their place of business at Odessa.  He had made a good beginning with Russian, and living in Russia, might hope soon