hing which you could tell me about her?"

"No!"

"Yet at her bidding you have done--what you refused me."

"I had no choice! Borrowdean saw to that," he remarked, bitterly.

She rose to her feet. She was pale, and her lips were quivering, but she
was splendidly handsome.

"What sort of a man are you, Lawrence Mannering?" she asked, steadily.
"You play at idealism, you asked me to marry you. Yet all the time there
was this background."

"It was madness," he admitted. "But remember it was Mrs. Handsell whom I
asked to be my wife."

"What difference does that make? She was a woman, too, I suppose, to be
honoured--or insulted--by your choice!"

"There was no question of insult, I think."

She looked at him steadfastly. Perhaps for a moment her thoughts
travelled back to those unforgotten days in the rose-gardens at Blakely,
to the man whose delicate but wholesome joy in the wind and the sun and
the flowers, the sea-stained marshes and the windy knolls where they had
so often stood together, she could not forget. His life had seemed to her
then so beautiful a thing. The elementary purity of his thoughts and
aspirations were unmistakable. She told herself passionately that there
must be a way out.

"Lawrence," she said, "we are man and woman, not boy and girl. You asked
me to marry you once, and I hesitated, only because of one thing. I do
not wish to look into any hidden chambers of your life. I wish to know
nothing, save of the present. What claim has this woman Blanche
Phillimore upon you?"

"It is her secret," he answered, "not mine alone."

"She lives in your house--through her you are a poor man--through her you
are back again, a worker in the world."

"Yes!"

"It must always be so?"

"Yes."

"And you have nothing more to say?"

"If I dared," he said, raising his eyes to hers, "I would say--trust me!
I am not exactly--one of the beasts of the field."

"Will you not trust me, then? I am not a foolish girl. I am a woman. You
may destroy an ideal, but there would be something left."

"I can tell you no more."

"Then it is to be good-bye?"

"If you say so!"

She turned slowly away. He watched her disappear. Afterwards, with a
curious sense of unreality, he remained quite still, his eyes still fixed
upon the portiere through which she had passed.

CHAPTER III

ONE OF THE "SUFFERERS"

Mannering kept no carriage, and he left Downing Street on foot. The
little house which he had taken