I can spare you the necessity.
You were going to speak, I believe, of the engagement between Lawrence
Mannering and myself."

"I was," Borrowdean admitted.

"It does not exist any longer," Berenice said, "I should be glad if you
would inform any one who has heard the rumour that it is without any
foundation."

Borrowdean looked thoughtfully at the woman by his side.

"I am very glad to hear it," he declared. "I am glad for many reasons,
and I am glad personally."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Indeed! I cannot imagine how it should affect you personally."

"I perhaps said more than I meant to," he replied, calmly. "I am a poor,
struggling politician myself, whose capital consists of brains and a
capacity for work, and whose hopes are coloured with perhaps too daring
ambitions. Amongst them--"

"Mr. Mannering has holed out from off the green," she interrupted.
"Positively immoral, I call it."

"Amongst them," Borrowdean continued, calmly, "is one which some day or
other I must tell you, for indeed you are concerned in it."

"I can assure you, Sir Leslie," she said, looking at him steadily,
"that I am not at all a sympathetic person. My strong advice to you would
be--not to tell me. I do not think that you would gain anything by it."

Borrowdean met his fate with a bow and a shrug of the shoulders.

"It only remains," he said, "for me to beg you to pardon what might seem
like presumption. Shall we meet them on the last green?"

Mannering would have avoided Berenice, but she gave him no option. She
laid her hand upon his arm, and volunteered to show him a new way home.

"You must be on your guard, Lawrence," she said. "Lord Redford is very
fond of concealing his plans to the last moment, but he is a very clever
man. And Sir Leslie Borrowdean would give his little finger to catch you
tripping. All this avoidance of politics is part of a scheme. They will
spring something upon you quite suddenly. Don't give any hasty pledges."

"Thank you for your warning," he said. "I will be careful."

"Tell me," she said, "as a friend, what are your plans? Forget that I am
interested in politics altogether. I simply want to know how you are
spending your time for the next few months."

"It depends upon them," he answered, looking downwards into the valley,
where Lord Redford and Borrowdean were walking side by side. "If they ask
me to resign my seat I shall go North again, and it is just possible that
I might come back in