before all the world."

Mrs. Hannaford was overcome with astonishment, with distress. She tried
to reply, but before she could shape a word Irene had swept from the
room.

When they met again at breakfast, the girl stepped up to her aunt and
kissed her on both cheeks--an unusual greeting. She was her bright self
again; talked merrily; read aloud a letter from her father, which
proved that at the time of writing he had not seen Arnold Jacks.

"I must write to the Doctor to-morrow," she said, with an air of
reflection.

At ten o'clock they drove to the station. While Miss Derwent took her
ticket Mrs. Hannaford walked on the platform. On issuing from the
booking-office, Irene saw her aunt in conversation with a man, who, in
the same moment, turned abruptly and walked away. Neither she nor her
aunt spoke of this incident, but Irene noticed that the other was a
little flushed.

She took her seat; Mrs. Hannaford stood awaiting the departure of the
train. Before it moved, the man Irene had noticed came back along the
platform, and passed them without a sign. Irene saw his face, and
seemed to recognise it, but could not remember who he was.

Half an hour later, the face came back to her, and with it a name.

"Daniel Otway!" she exclaimed to herself.

It was five years and more since her one meeting with him at Ewell, but
the man, on that occasion, had impressed her strongly in a very
disagreeable way. She had since heard of him, in relation to Piers
Otway's affairs, and knew that her aunt had received a call from him in
Bryanston Square. What could be the meaning of this incident on the
platform? Irene wondered, and had an unpleasant feeling about it.

CHAPTER XX

On the journey homeward, and for two or three days after, Piers held
argument with his passions, trying to persuade himself that he had in
truth lost nothing, inasmuch as his love had never been founded upon a
reasonable hope. Irene Derwent was neither more nor less to him now
than she had been ever since he first came to know her: a far ideal,
the woman he would fain call wife, but only in a dream could think of
winning. What audacity had speeded him on that wild expedition? It was
well that he had been saved from declaring his folly to Irene herself,
who would have shared the pain her answer inflicted. Nay, when the
moment came, reason surely would have checked his absurd impulse. In
seeing her once more, he saw how wide was the distance between t