He took the packet of letters from the table.
He had not yet read them through; had only tested them here and
there under his brother's eye. Yes, they were the letters of a
woman, who, suffering (as he knew) the strongest temptation to which
her nature could be exposed, subdued herself in obedience to what
she held the law of duty. He read page after page. Again and again
she all but said, "I love you"; again and again she told her tempter
that his suit was useless, that she would rather die than yield.
Daniel Otway had used every argument to persuade her to defy the
world and follow him--easy to understand his motives. One saw
that, if she had been alone, she would have done so; but there was
her daughter, there was her brother; to them she sacrificed what
seemed to her the one chance of happiness left in a wasted life.
Piers interrupted his reading to hear once more the voice that
counselled baseness. Whom would it injure, if he destroyed these
papers? Certainly not Irene, his first thought, who, he held it
proved, was well rescued from a mistaken marriage. Not Dr. Derwent,
or Olga, who, he persuaded himself, had already no doubt whatever of
Mrs. Hannaford's innocence. Not the poor dead woman herself----
What was this passage on which his eye had fallen? "I have long had
a hope that your brother Piers might marry Olga. It would make me
very happy; I cannot imagine for her a better husband.
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