"Think of my good fortune in meeting you this afternoon. If I had gone to the Castle another way, I should have missed you; yet I all but did go by the fields. And there was nothing I desired so much as to see you somewhere--by yourself." The slight failing of his voice at the end helped Irene to speak collectedly. "Chance was in my favour, too. I came down to the beck, hoping I might meet you." She saw his hand move, the fingers clutch together. Before he could say anything, she continued: "I want to tell you of an ill-natured story that has reached my ears. Not to discuss it; I know it is untrue. Your two brothers--do you know that they speak spitefully of you?" "I didn't know it. I don't think I have given them cause." "I am very sure you haven't. But I want you to know about it, and I shall tell you the facts. After the death of my aunt, Mrs. Hannaford, you got from the hands of Daniel Otway a packet of her letters; he bargained with you, and you paid his price, wishing those letters to be seen by my father and my cousin Olga, whose minds they would set at rest. Now, Daniel Otway is telling people that you never paid the sum you promised him, and 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."