Piers carelessly gave it.  He was paying hardly any attention to his brother’s talk, and would have felt it waste of energy to reassert what he had said in the formal conclave.  Weariness had come upon him after these days of grief and indignant tumult; he wanted to be alone.

The portrait for which he had asked was very quickly found.  It lay in a drawer, locked away among other mementoes of the past.  With a shock of disappointment, Piers saw that the old photograph had faded almost to invisibility.  He just discerned the outlines of a pleasant face, the dim suggestion of womanly charm—­all he would ever see of the mother who bore him.

“It seems to me,” said Daniel, after sympathising with his chagrin, “that there must be a lot of papers, literary work, letters, and that kind of thing, which will have more interest for you than for anyone else.  When we get things looked through, shall I send you whatever I think you would care for?”

With gratitude Piers accepted what he could not have brought himself to ask for.

On the southward journey he kept taking from his pocket two letters which had reached him at Hawes.  One was from John Jacks, full of the kindliest condolence; a manly letter which it did him good to read.  The other came from Mrs. Hannaford, womanly, sincere; it contained a passage to which Piers returned again and again.  “My niece is really grieved to hear of your sudden loss; happening at a moment when all seemed to be going well with you.  She begs me to assure you of her very true sympathy, and sends every good wish.”  Little enough, this, but the recipient tried to make much of it.  He had faintly hoped that Irene might send him a line in her own hand.  That was denied, and perhaps he was foolish even to have dreamt of it.

He could not address his verses to her, now.  He must hurry away from England, and try to forget her.

Of course she would bear, one way or another, about the circumstances of his birth.  It would come out that he had no share in the property left by his father, and the reason be made known.  He hoped that she might also learn that death had prevented his father’s plan for benefiting him.  He hoped it; for in that ease she might feel compassion.  Yet in the same moment he felt that this was a delusive solace.  Pity for a man because he had lost money does not incline to warmer emotion.  The hope was sheer feebleness of spirit.  He spurned it; he desired no one’s compassion.

How would Irene regard the fact of his illegitimacy?  Not, assuredly, from Mrs. Otway’s point of view; she was a century ahead of that.  Possibly she was capable of dismissing it as indifferent.  But he could not be certain of her freedom from social prejudice.  He remembered the singular shock with which he himself had first learnt what he was a state of mind quite irrational, but only to be dismissed with an effort of the trained intelligence.  Irene would undergo the same experience, and it might affect her thought of him for ever.