"Of course I know she cares and thinks nothing about me now. But if
I made my way----"

"She will marry very early, and someone----"

With an upward movement of her hand the speaker, was sufficiently
explicit. Otway, he knew not why, tried to laugh, and frightened
himself with the sound.

"She is not the only girl, good and beautiful," Mrs. Hannaford
continued, pleading with him.

"For me she is," he replied, in a hard voice. "And I believe she
will be always."

For a minute or two the little warbler sang in silence, then Piers,
of a sudden, stood up, and strode hastily away.

Mrs. Hannaford fell into reverie. Her daughter was in London to-day,
her husband absent somewhere else. But she had not been solitary,
for Daniel Otway, failing to meet his brother, lingered a couple of
hours in the drawing-room. As she sat dreaming under the soft light,
her face relieved for the moment of its weariness and discontent,
had a beauty more touching than that of youth.

Upstairs, Piers found a letter awaiting him. He did not know the
writing, and found with surprise that it came from his brother
Alexander, who had addressed it to him through their father's
solicitor. Alexander wrote from the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury