"I will let my uncle see the letters at once," Olga went on, in confused hurry. "I am sure he will be very grateful to you. But for you, we should never have had this proof. I, of course, did not need it; as if I doubted my mother! But he--I can't be sure what he still thinks. How kind you have always been to us!"
Piers stood up again, but did not move toward her. She watched him apprehensively. He walked half down the room and back again, then exclaimed, with a wild gesture:
"I never knew what a curse one's name could be! I used to be proud of it, because it was my father's; now I would gladly take any other."
"Just because of that man?" Olga protested. "What does it matter?"
"You know well what it matters," he replied, with an unnatural laugh.
"To me--nothing whatever."
"You try to think not. But the name will be secretly hateful to you as long as you live."
"Oh! How can you say that! The name is yours, not his. Think how long we knew you before we heard of him! I am telling the simple truth. It is you I think of, when----"
He was drawing nearer to her, and again that strange, fixed look came into his eyes.
"I wanted to ask you something," said Olga quickly. "Do sit down--will you? Let us talk as we used to--you remember?"
He obeyed her, but kept his eyes on her face.
"What do you wish to ask, Olga?"
The name slipped from his tongue; he had not meant to use it, and did not seem conscious of having done so.
"Have you seen old Mr. Jacks lately?"
"I saw him last night."
"Last night?" Her breath caught. "Had he anything--anything interesting to say?"
"He is ill. I only sat with him for half an hour. I don't know what it is. It doesn't keep him in bed; but he lies on a sofa, and looks dreadfully ill, as if he suffered much pain."
"He told you nothing?"
Their eyes met.
"Nothing that greatly interested me," replied Piers heavily, with the most palpable feint of carelessness. "He mentioned what of course you know, that Arnold Jacks is not going to be married after all."
Olga's head drooped, as she said in a voice barely audible:
"Ah, you knew it."
"What of that?"
"I see--you knew it----"
"What of that, Olga?" he repeated impatiently. "I knew it as a bare fact--no explanation. What does it mean? You know, I suppose?"
In spite of himself, look and tones betrayed his eagerness for her reply.
"They disagreed about something," said Olga. "I don't know what. I shouldn't wonder if they make it up again."
At this moment the woman in care of the house entered with the tea-tray. To give herself a countenance, Olga spoke of something indifferent, and when they were alone again, their talk avoided the personal matters which had so embarrassed both of them. Olga said presently that she was going to see her friend Miss Bonnicastle to-morrow.
"If I could see only the least chance of supporting myself, I would go to live with her again. She's the most sensible girl I know, and she did me good."
"How, did you good?"
"She helped me against myself," replied Olga abruptly. "No one else ever did that."
Then she turned again to the safer subjects.
"When shall I see you again?" Otway inquired, rising after a long silence, during which both had seemed lost in their thoughts.
"Who knows?--But I will write and tell you what my uncle says about the letters, if he says anything. Again, thank you!"
She gave her hand frankly. Piers held it, and looked into her face as once before.
"Olga----"
The girl uttered a cry of distress, drew her hand away, and exclaimed in a half-hysterical voice:
"No! What right have you?"
"Every right! Do you know what your mother said to me--her last words to me----?"
"You mustn't tell me!" Her tones were softer. "Not to-day. If we meet again----"
"Of course we shall meet again!"
"I don't know. Yes, yes; we shall. But you must go now; it is time I went home."
He touched her hand again, and left the room without looking back. Before the door had closed behind him, Olga ran forward with a stifled cry. The door was shut. She stood before it with tears in her eyes, her fingers clenched together on her breast, and sobbed miserably.
For nearly half an hour she sat by the fire, head on hands, deeply brooding. In the house there was not a sound. All at once it seemed to her that a voice called, uttering her name; she started, her blood chilled with fear. The voice was her mother's; she seemed still to hear it, so plainly had it been audible, coming from she knew not where.
She ran to her hat and jacket, which lay in a corner of the room, put them on with feverish haste, and fled out into the street.
CHAPTER XXIX
"I will be frank with you, Piers," said Daniel Otway, as he sat by the fireside in his shabby lodgings, his feet on the fender, a cigarette between his fingers. He looked yellow and dried up; shivered now and then, and had a troublesome cough. "If I could afford to be generous, I would be; I should enjoy it. It's one of the worst evils of poverty, that a man can seldom obey the promptings of his better self. I can't give you these letters; can't afford to do so. You have glanced through them; you see they really are what I said. The question is, what are they worth to you?"
Piers looked at the threadbare carpet, reflected, spoke.
"I'll give you fifty pounds."
A smile crept from the corners of Daniel's shrivelled lips to his bloodshot eye.
"Why are you so anxious to have them," he said, "I don't know and don't ask. But if they are worth fifty to you, they are worth more. You shall have them for two hundred."
And at this figure the bundle of letters eventually changed hands. It was a serious drain on Piers Otway's resources, but he could not bargain long, the talk sickened him. And when the letters were in his possession, he felt a joy which had no equivalent in terms of cash.
He said to himself that he had bought them for Olga. In a measure, of course, for all who would be relieved by knowing that Mrs. Hannaford had told the truth; but first and foremost for Olga. On Olga he kept his thoughts. He was persuading himself that in her he saw his heart's desire.
For Piers Otway was one of those men who cannot live without a woman's image to worship. Irene Derwent being now veiled from him, he turned to another beautiful face, in whose eyes the familiar light of friendship seemed to be changing, softening. Ambition had misled him; not his to triumph on the heights of glorious passion; for him a humbler happiness a calmer love. Yet he would not have been Piers Otway had this mood contented him. On the second day of his dreaming about Olga, she began to shine before his imagination in no pale light. He mused upon her features till they became the ideal beauty; he clad her, body and soul, in all the riches of love's treasure-house; she was at length his crowned lady, his perfect