er--speak with her alone."

She drew back, astonished.

"Oh! how can you think of it, Mr. Otway?"

"Why should I not?" he spoke in a low and soft voice, but with
vehemence. "Does she know all about me?"

"Everything. It was not I who told her. There has been talk----"

"Of course there has"--he smiled--"and I am glad of it. I wished her to
know. Otherwise, I should have told her. Yes, I should have told her!
It shocks you, Mrs. Hannaford? But try to understand what this means to
me. It is the one thing I greatly desire in all the world, shall I be
hindered by a petty consideration of etiquette? A wild desire--you
think. Well, the man sentenced to execution clings to life, clings to
it with a terrible fierce desire; is it less real because utterly
hopeless? Perhaps I am behaving frantically; I can't help myself. As
that engagement is still doubtful--you admit it to be doubtful--I shall
speak before it is too late. Why not have done so before? Simply, I
hadn't the courage. I suppose I was too young. It didn't mean so much
to me as it does now. Something tells me to act like a man, before it
is too late. I feel I _can_ do it. I never could have, till now."

"But listen to me--do listen! Think how extraordinary it will seem to
her. She has no suspicion of----"

"She has! She knows! I sent her: a year ago, a poem--some verses of my
writing, which told her."

Mrs. Hannaford kept silence with a face of distress.

"Is there any harm," he pursued, "in asking you whether she has ever
spoken of me lately--since that time?"

"She has," admitted the other reluctantly, "but not in a way to make
one think----"

"No, no! I expected nothing of the kind. She has mentioned me; that is
enough. I am not utterly expelled from her thoughts, as a creature
outlawed by all decent people----"

"Of course not. She is too reasonable and kind."

"That she is!" exclaimed Piers, with a passionate delight on his visage
and in his voice. "And she would _rather_ I spoke to her--I feel she
would! She, with her fine intelligence and noble heart, she would think
it dreadful that a man did not dare to approach her, just because of
something not his fault, something that made him no bit the less a man,
and capable of honour. I know that thought would shake her with pity
and indignation. So far I can read in her. What! You think I know her
too little? And the thought of her never out of my mind for these five
years! I have got to know her bette