"I am as glad, almost, as you can be," he said. "Malvern, I never
was there."
"So healthy, my brother says! And Shakespeare's country, you know;
we shall go to Stratford, which I have never seen. I have a feeling
that I really shall get better. Everything is more hopeful."
Piers recalled Olga's mysterious hints about her mother. Glancing at
the worn face, with its vivid eyes, he could easily conceive that
this ill-health had its cause in some grave mental trouble.
"Have you met your brother?" she asked.
"My brother? Oh no!" was the careless reply. Then on a sudden
thought, Piers added, "You don't keep up your acquaintance with him,
do you?"
"Oh--I _have_ seen him--now and then----"
There was a singular hesitancy in her answer to the abrupt question.
Piers, preoccupied as he was, could not but remark Mrs. Hannaford's
constraint, almost confusion. At once it struck him that Daniel had
been borrowing money of her, and the thought aroused strong
indignation. His own hundred and fifty pounds he had never
recovered, for all Daniel's fine speeches, and notwithstanding the
fact that he had taken suggestive care to let the borrower know his
address in. Russia. Rapidly he turned in his mind the question
whether he ought not to let Mrs. Hannaford know of Daniel's
untrustworthiness; but before he could decide, she launched into
another subject.
"So this is to be your place of business? Here you will sit day
after day.
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