tempted. He took the packet of letters from the table.

He had not yet read them through; had only tested them here and there
under his brother's eye. Yes, they were the letters of a woman, who,
suffering (as he knew) the strongest temptation to which her nature
could be exposed, subdued herself in obedience to what she held the law
of duty. He read page after page. Again and again she all but said, "I
love you"; again and again she told her tempter that his suit was
useless, that she would rather die than yield. Daniel Otway had used
every argument to persuade her to defy the world and follow him--easy
to understand his motives. One saw that, if she had been alone, she
would have done so; but there was her daughter, there was her brother;
to them she sacrificed what seemed to her the one chance of happiness
left in a wasted life.

Piers interrupted his reading to hear once more the voice that
counselled baseness. Whom would it injure, if he destroyed these
papers? Certainly not Irene, his first thought, who, he held it proved,
was well rescued from a mistaken marriage. Not Dr. Derwent, or Olga,
who, he persuaded himself, had already no doubt whatever of Mrs.
Hannaford's innocence. Not the poor dead woman herself----

What was this passage on which his eye had fallen? "I have long had a
hope that your brother Piers might marry Olga. It would make me very
happy; I cannot imagine for her a better husband. It came first into my
mind years ago, at Geneva, and I have never lost the wish. Ah! how
grateful you would make me, if, forgetting ourselves, you would join me
in somehow trying to bring about this happiness for those two! Piers is
coming to live in London. Do see as much of him as you can. I think
very, very highly of him, and he is almost as dear to me as a son of my
own. Speak to him of Olga. Sometimes a suggestion--and you know that I
desire only his good."

The voice spoke to him from the grave; it had a sweeter tone than that
other. He read on; he came to the last sheet--so sad, so hopeless, that
it brought tears to his eyes.

"Cannot you defend me? Cannot you prove the falsehood of that story?
Cannot you save me from this bitter disgrace? Oh, who will show the
truth and do me justice?"

Could he burn that letter? Could he close his ears against that cry of
one driven to death by wrong?

He drew a deep sigh, and looked about him as if waking from a bad
dream. Why, he had come near to whole brotherhood wit