The sight of Irene's successful lover made active in him what had for years been only a latent passion. All at once it seemed impossible that he should have lost what hitherto he had scarcely ever felt it possible to win. An unconsciously reared edifice of hope collapsed about him, laid waste his life, left him standing in desolate revolt against fate. Arnold Jacks was the embodiment of a cruel destiny; Piers regarded him, not so much with hate, as with a certain bitter indignation. He had no desire to disparage the man, to caricature his assailable points; rather, in undiminished worship of Irene, he exaggerated the qualities which had won her, the power to which her gallant pride had yielded. These qualities, that power, were so unlike anything in himself, that they gave boundless scope to a jealous imagination. He knew so little of the man, of his pursuits, his society, his prospects or ambitions. But he could not imagine that Irene's love would be given to any man of ordinary type; there must be a nobility in John Jacks' son, and indeed, knowing the father, one could readily believe it. Piers suffered a cruel sense of weakness, of littleness, by comparison. And Arnold behaved so well to him, with such frank graceful courtesy; to withhold the becoming return was to feel oneself a shrinking creature, basely envious. It was at Mrs. Hannaford's suggestion that he asked to be allowed to call on Olga. A few days later, having again exchanged letters with Irene's aunt, he sat writing in the office after business hours, his door and that of the anteroom both open. Footsteps on the staircase had become infrequent since the main exodus of clerks; he listened whenever there was a sound, and looked towards the entrance. There, at length, appeared a lady, Mrs. Hannaford herself. Piers went forward, and greeted her without words, motioning her with his hand into the inner office; the outer door he latched. "So I have tracked you to your lair!" exclaimed the visitor, with a nervous laugh, as she sank in fatigue upon the chair he placed for her. "I looked for your name on the wall downstairs, forgetting that you are Moncharmont & Co." "It is very, very kind of you to have taken all this trouble!" He saw in her face the signs of ill-health for which he was prepared, and noticed with pain her tremulousness and shortness of breath after the stair-climbing. The friendship which had existed between them since his boyhood was true and deep as ever; Piers Otway could, as few men can, be the loyal friend of a woman. A reverent tenderness coloured his feeling towards Mrs. Hannaford; it was something like what he would have felt for his mother had she now been living. He did not give much thought to her character or circumstances; she had always been kind to him, and he in turn had always liked her: that was enough. Anything in her service that might fall within his power to do, he would do right gladly. "So you saw poor Olga?"