Piers was mute with astonishment. It was so long since he had seen Mrs. Jacks, and he pictured her as a woman much older than Eustace Derwent. His clearest recollection of her was that remark she made at the luncheon-table about the Irish, that they were so "sentimental"; it had blurred her beauty and her youth in his remembrance. "Yes, Eustace is going to marry her; and I shouldn't wonder if the marriage turns out well. It leads to the disagreeable thing I have to talk about. You know that I engaged myself to Arnold Jacks. I did so freely, thinking I did right. When the time of the marriage drew near, I had learnt that I had done _wrong_. Not that I wished to be the wife of anyone else. I loved nobody; I did not love the man I was pretending to. As soon as I knew that--what was I to do? To marry him was a crime--no less a crime for its being committed every day. I took my courage in both hands. I told him I did not love him, I would not marry him. And--I ran away." The memory made her bosom heave, her cheeks flush. "Magnificent!" commented the listener, with a happy smile. "Ah! but I didn't do it very well. I treated him badly--yes, inconsiderately, selfishly. The thing had to be done--but there were ways of doing it. Unfortunately I had got to resent my captivity, and I spoke to him as if _he_ were to blame. From the point of view of delicacy, perhaps he was; he should have released me at once, and that he wouldn't. But I was too little regardful of what it meant to him--above all to his pride. I have so often reproached myself. I do it now for the last time. There!" She picked up a pebble to fling away. "It is gone! We speak of the thing no more." A change was coming upon the glen. The sun had passed; it shone now only on the tree-tops. But the sky above was blue and warm as ever. "Another thing," she pursued, more gravely. "My father----" Piers waited a moment, then said with eyes downcast: "He does not think well of me?" "That is my grief, and my trouble. However, not a serious trouble. Of you, personally, he has no dislike; it was quite the opposite when he met you; when you dined at our house--you remember? He said things of you I am not going to repeat, sir. It was only after the disaster which involved your name. Then he grew prejudiced." "Who can wonder?" "It will pass over. My father is no stage-tyrant. If _he_ is not open to reason, what man living is? And no man has a tenderer heart. He was all kindness and forbearance and understanding when I did a thing which might well have made him angry. Some day you shall see the letter he wrote me, when I had run away to Paris. In it, he spoke, as never to me before, of his own marriage--of his love for my mother. Every word remains in my memory, but I can't trust my voice to repeat them, and perhaps I ought not--even to you." "May I go to him, and speak for myself?" "Yes--but not till I have seen him."