When Piers Otway got back to Ewell, about four o'clock, he felt the beginning of a headache.

The day of excitement might have accounted for it, but in the last few weeks it had been too common an experience with him, a warning, naturally, against his mode of life, and of course unheeded.

On reaching the house, he saw and heard no one; the door stood open, and he went straight up to his room.
He had only one, which served him for study and bedchamber.

In front of the window stood a large table, covered with his books and papers, and there, on the blotting pad, lay a letter which had arrived for him since his departure this morning.

It came, he saw, from his father.