h a man as coldly
cruel and infamous as any that walked the earth! Destroying these
letters, he would have been worse than Daniel.

Straightway he wrote to Olga, requesting the appointment with her. Upon
Olga once more he fixed his mind. He resolved that he would not part
from her without asking her to be his wife. If he had but done so
before hearing that news from John Jacks! Then it seemed to him that
Olga was his happiness.

From the house at Campden Hill he came away in a strangely excited
mood; glad, sorry; cold, desirous; torn this way and that by conflict
of passions and reasons. The only clear thought in his mind was that he
had done a great act of justice. How often does it fall to a man to
enjoy this privilege? Not once in a lifetime to the multitude such
opportunity is the signal favour of fate. Had he let it pass, Piers
felt he must have sunk so in his own esteem, that no light of noble
hope would ever again have shone before him. He must have gone plodding
the very mire of existence--Daniel's brother, never again anything but
Daniel's brother.

Would Dr. Derwent give him a thought of thanks? Would Irene hear how
these letters were recovered?

Sunday passed, he knew not well how. He wrote a letter to Olga, but
destroyed it. On Monday he was very busy, chiefly at the warehouses of
the Commercial Docks; a man of affairs; to look upon, not strikingly
different from many another with whom he rubbed shoulders in Fenchurch
Street and elsewhere. On Tuesday he had to go to Liverpool, to see an
acquaintance of Moncharmont who might perchance be useful to them. The
journey, the change, were not unpleasant. He passed the early evening
with the man in question, who asked him at what hotel he meant to
sleep. Piers named the house he had carelessly chosen, adding that he
had not been there yet; his bag was still at the station.

"Don't go there," said his companion. "It's small and uncomfortable and
dear. You'll do much better at----"

Without giving a thought to the matter, Otway accepted this advice. He
went to the station, withdrew his bag, and bade a cabman drive him to
the hotel his acquaintance had named. But no sooner had the cab started
than he felt an unaccountable misgiving, an uneasiness as to this
change of purpose. Strange as he was to Liverpool, there seemed no
reason why he should hesitate so about his hotel; yet the mental
disturbance became so strong that, when all but arrived, he stopped the
cab