But for the presence of Piers Otway at meals, and sometimes in the afternoon or evening, they would hardly have known conversation.
For when Hannaford was at home, his sour muteness discouraged any kind of talk; in his absence, mother and daughter soon exhausted all they had to say to each other, and read or brooded or nursed their headaches apart.
With the coming of Irene, gloom vanished.

It had always been so, since the beginning of her girlhood; the name of Irene Derwent signified miseries forgotten, mirthful hours, the revival of health and hope.
Unable to resist her influence, Hannaford always kept as much as possible out of the way when she was under his roof; the conflict between inclination to unbend and stubborn coldness towards his family made him too uncomfortable.

Vivaciously tactful in this as in all things, Irene had invented a pleasant fiction which enabled her to meet Mr.Hannaford without embarrassment; she always asked him "How is your neuralgia ?" And the man, according as he felt, made answer that it was better or worse.

That neuralgia was often a subject of bitter jest between Mrs.Hannaford and Olga, but it had entered into the life of the family, and at times seemed to be believed in even by the imagined sufferer.
Nothing could have been more characteristic of Irene.

Wit at the service of good feeling expressed her nature.
Her visit this time would be specially interesting, for she had passed the winter in Finland, amid the intellectual society of Helsingfors.
Letters had given a foretaste of what she would have to tell, but Irene was no great letter-writer.