for it, but in the last few weeks it had been too common an
experience with him, a warning, naturally, against his mode of life,
and of course unheeded. On reaching the house, he saw and heard no
one; the door stood open, and he went straight up to his room.

He had only one, which served him for study and bedchamber. In front
of the window stood a large table, covered with his books and
papers, and there, on the blotting pad, lay a letter which had
arrived for him since his departure this morning. It came, he saw,
from his father. He took it up eagerly, and was tearing the envelope
when his eye fell on something that stayed his hand.

The wide-open window offered a view over the garden at the back of
the house, and on the lawn he saw a little group of ladies. Seated
in basket chairs, Mrs. Hannaford and her daughter were conversing
with a third person whom Piers did not know, a tall, fair-faced girl
who stood before them and seemed at this moment to be narrating some
lively story. Even had her features been hidden, the attitude of
this stranger, her admirable form and rapid, graceful gestures, must
have held the young man's attention; seeing her with the light full
on her countenance, he gazed and gazed, in sudden complete
forgetfulness of his half-opened letter. Just so had he stood before
the print shop in London this morning, with the same wide eyes, the
same hurried breathing; rapt, self-oblivious.

He remembered. The Hannafords' relative, Miss Derwent, was expected
to-day; and Miss Derwent, doubtless, he beheld.

The next moment it occurred to him that his observation, within
earshot of the group, was a sort of eavesdropping; he closed his