quiry."

Piers flashed a look of gratitude. He had, as yet, hardly glanced at
her; he durst not; his ordeal was to be gone through as became a man.
Her voice, at moments, touched him to a sense of faintness; he saw her
without turning his head; the wave of her dress beside him was like a
perfume, was like music; part of him yielded, languished, part made
splendid resistance.

"He is a lesson in civilisation. If trade is not to put an end to human
progress, it must be pursued in Moncharmont's spirit. It's only
returning to a better time; our man of business is a creation of our
century, and as bad a thing as it has produced. Commerce must be
humanised once more. We invented machinery, and it has enslaved us--a
rule of iron, the servile belief that money-making is an end in itself,
to be attained by hard selfishness."

He checked himself, laughed, and said something about the beauty of the
lane along which they were walking.

"Don't you think," fell from Irene's lips, "that Mr. John Jacks is a
very human type of the man of business?"

"Indeed he is!" replied Piers, with spirit. "An admirable type."

"I have been told that he owed most of his success to his brothers, who
are a different sort of men."

"His wealth, perhaps."

"Yes, there's a difference," said Irene, glancing at him. "You may be
successful without becoming wealthy; though not of course in the common
opinion. But what would have been the history of England these last
fifty years, but for our men of iron selfishness? Isn't it a fact that
only in this way could we have built up an Empire which ensures the
civilisation of the world?"

Piers could not answer with his true thought, for he knew all that was
implied in her suggestion of that view. He bent his head and spoke very
quietly.

"Some of our best men think so."

An answer which gratified Irene more keenly than he imagined; she
showed it in her face.

When they returned to luncheon, and the ladies went upstairs, Mrs.
Hannaford stepped into her niece's room.

"What you told me yesterday," she asked, in a nervous undertone, "may
it be repeated?"

"Certainly--to anyone."

"Then please not to come down until I have had a few minutes' talk with
Mr. Otway. All this shall be explained, dear, when we are alone again."

On entering the sitting-room Irene found it harder to preserve a
natural demeanour than at her meeting with the visitor a couple of
hours ago. Only when she had heard him speak