"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."
Piers could not speak.
"Look!" said Irene, in a whisper, pointing.