that, being in poverty, he vainly applies to you
for help."

She saw his hand grasp a twig that hung near him, and drag it rudely
down; she did not look at his face.

"I should have thought," Piers answered with grave composure, "that
nothing Daniel Otway said could concern me. I see it isn't so. It must
have troubled you, for you to speak of it."

"It has; I thought about it. I rejected it as a falsehood."

"There's a double falsehood. I paid him the price he asked, on the day
he asked it, and I have since"--he checked himself--"I have not refused
him help in his poverty."

Irene's heart glowed within her. Even thus, and not otherwise, would
she have desired him to refute the slander. It was a test she had
promised herself; she could have laughed for joy. Her voice betrayed
this glad emotion.

"Let him say what he will; it doesn't matter now. But how comes it that
he is poor?"

"That I should like to know." Piers threw a pebble into the still,
brown water near him. "Five years ago, he came into a substantial sum
of money. I suppose--it went very quickly. Daniel is not exactly a
prudent man."

"I imagine not," remarked Irene, allowing herself a glimpse of his
countenance, which she found to be less calm than his tone. "Let us
have done with him. Five years ago," she added, with soft accents,
"some of that money ought to have been yours, and you received nothing."

"Nothing was legally due to me," he answered, in a voice lower than
hers.

"That I know. I mention it--you will forgive me?--because I have
sometimes feared that you might explain to yourself wrongly my failure
to reply when you sent me those verses, long ago. I have thought,
lately, that you might suppose I knew certain facts at that time. I
didn't; I only learnt them afterwards. At no time would it have made
any difference."

Piers could not speak.

"Look!" said Irene, in a whisper, pointing.

A great dragon-fly, a flash of blue, had dropped on to the surface of
the pool, and lay floating. As they watched it rose, to drop again upon
a small stone amid a shallow current; half in, half out of, the sunny
water, it basked.

"Oh, how lovely everything is!" exclaimed Irene, in a voice that
quivered low. "How perfect a day!"

"It was weather like this when I first saw you," said Piers. "Earlier,
but just as bright. My memory of you has always lived in sunshine. I
saw you first from my window; you were standing in the garden at Ewell;
I heard