Piers Otway had ceased to nibble his blade of grass; his eyes were fixed on Irene. When she had made a sudden end of speaking, when she smiled her apology for the fervour forbidden in polite converse, he still gazed at her, self-oblivious. Helen Borisoff watched him, askance.
"Let us go in and have some tea," she said, rising abruptly.
Soon after, March said good-bye, a definite good-bye; he was going to another part of England. With all the grace of his caste he withdrew from a circle, in which, temptations notwithstanding, he had not felt quite at ease. Riding down the dale through a sunny shower, he was refreshed and himself again.
"Where do you put up to-night?" asked Helen of Otway, turning to him, when the other man had gone, with a brusque familiarity.
"At the inn down in Redmire."
"And what do you do to-morrow?"
"Go to see the falls at Aysgarth, for one thing. There's been rain up on the hills; the river will be grand."
"Perhaps we shall be there."
When Piers had left them, Helen said to her friend
"I wanted to ask him to stay and dine--but I didn't know whether you would like it."
"I? I am not the hostess."
"No, but you have humours, Irene. One has to be careful."
Irene knitted her brows, and stood for a moment with face half averted.
"If I cause this sort of embarrassment," she said frankly, "I think I oughtn't to stay."
"It's easily put right, my dear girl. Answer me a simple question. If I lead Mr. Otway to suppose that his company for a few days is not disagreeable to us, shall I worry you, or not?"
"Not in the least," was the equally direct answer.
"That's better. We've always got along so well, you know, that it's annoying to feel there's something not quits understood between us. Then I shall send a note down to the inn where he's staying, to appoint a meeting at Aysgarth to-morrow. And I shall ask him to come here for the rest of the day, if he chooses."
At nightfall, the rain-clouds spread from the hills of Westmorland, and there were some hours of downpour. This did not look hopeful for the morrow, but, on the other hand, it promised a finer sight at the falls, if by chance the weather grew tolerable. The sun rose amid dropping vapours, and at breakfast-time had not yet conquered the day, but a steady brightening soon put an end to doubt. The friends prepared to set forth.
As they were entering the carriage there arrived the postman, with letters for both, which they read driving down to the dale. One of Irene's correspondents was her brother, and the contents of Eustace's letter so astonished her that she sat for a time absorbed in thought.
"No bad news, I hope?" said Helen, who had glanced quickly over the few lines from her husband, now at Ostend.
"No, but startling. You may as well read the letter."
It was written in Eustace Derwent's best style; really a very good letter, both as to composition and in the matter of feeling. After duly preparing his sister for what might come as a shock, he made known to her that he was about to marry Mrs. John Jacks, the widow of the late member of Parliament. "I can quite imagine," he proceeded, "that this may trouble your mind by exciting unpleasant memories, and perhaps may make you apprehensive of disagreeable things in the future. Pray have no such uneasiness. Only this morning I had a long talk with Arnold Jacks, who was very friendly, and indeed could not have behaved better. He spoke of you, and quite in the proper way; I was to remember him very kindly to you, if I thought the remembrance would not be unwelcome. As for my dear Marian, you will find her everything that a sister should be." Followed sundry details and promise of more information when they met again in town.
"Describe her to me," said Helen, who had a slight acquaintance with Irene's brother.
"One word does it--irreproachable. A couple of years older than Eustace, I think; John Jacks was more than twice her age, so it's only fair. The dear boy will probably give up his profession, and become an ornament of society, a model of all the proprieties. Wonderful I shan't realise it for a few days."
As they drove on to the bridge at Aysgarth, Piers Otway stood there awaiting them. They exchanged few words; the picture before their eyes, and the wild music that filled the air, imposed silence. Headlong between its high banks plunged the swollen torrent, the roaring spate; brown from its washing of the peaty moorland, and churned into flying flakes of foam. Over the worn ledges, at other times a succession of little waterfalls, rolled in resistless fury a mighty cataract; at great rocks in mid-channel it leapt with surges like those of an angry sea. The spectacle was fascinating in its grandeur, appalling in its violence; with the broad leafage of the glen arched over it in warm, still sunshine, wondrously beautiful.
They wandered some way by the river banks; then drove to other spots of which Otway spoke, lunched at a village inn, and by four o'clock returned altogether to the Castle. After tea, Piers found himself alone with Irene. Mrs. Borisoff had left the room whilst he was speaking, and so silently that for a moment he was not aware of her withdrawal. Alone with Irene, for the first time since he had known her; even at Ewell, long ago, they had never been together without companionship. There fell a silence. Piers could not lift his eyes to the face which had all day been before him, the face which seemed more than ever beautiful amid nature's beauties. He wished to thank her for the letter she had written him to St. Petersburg, but was fearful of seeming to make too much of this mark of kindness. Irene herself resumed the conversation.
"You will continue to write for the reviews, I hope?"
"I shall try to," he answered softly.
"Your Russian must be very idiomatic. I found it hard in places."
Overcome with delight, he looked at her and bent towards her.
"Mrs. Borisoff told me you had learnt. I know what that means--learning Russian in England, out of books. I began to do it at Ewell--do you remember?"
"Yes, I remember very well. Have you written anything besides these two articles?"
"Written--yes, but not published. I have written all sorts of things." His voice shook. "Even--verse."
He repented the word as soon as it was uttered. Again his eyes could not move towards hers.
"I know you have," said Irene, in the voice of one who smiles.
"I have never been sure that you knew it--that you received those verses."
"To tell you the truth, I didn't know how to acknowledge them. I never received the dedication of a poem, before or since, and in my awkwardness I put off my thanks till it was too late to send them. But I remember the lines; I think they were beautiful. Shall you ever include them in a volume?"
"I wrote no more, I am no poet. Yet if you had given a word of praise"--he laughed, as one does when emotion is too strong--"I should have written on and on, with a glorious belief in myself."
"Perhaps it was as well, then, that I said nothing. Poetry must come of itself, without praise--don't you think?"
"Yes, I lived it--or tried to live it--instead of putting it into metre."
"That's exactly what I once heard my father say about himself. And he called it consuming his own smoke."
Piers could not but join in her quiet laugh, yet he had never felt a moment less opportune for laughter. As if to prove that she purposely changed the note of