n asked, blandly, "how much longer you intend
to exist here with him?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"All my days--perhaps! He and this place together are an anchorage. Look
at me! Am I not a different woman? I know you too well, my dear Leslie,
to attempt your conversion, but I can assure you that I am--very nearly
in earnest!"

"You interest me amazingly," he remarked, smiling. "May I ask, does
Mannering know you as Mrs. Handsell only?"

"Of course!"

"This," he continued, "is not the Garden of Eden. I may be the first, but
others will come who will surely recognize you."

"I must risk it," she answered.

Borrowdean swung his eyeglass backwards and forwards. All the time he was
thinking intensely.

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

"Very nearly two months," she answered. "Imagine it!"

"Quite long enough for your little idyll," he said. "Come, you know what
the end of it must be. We need Mannering! Help us!"

"Not I," she answered, coolly. "You must do without him for the present."

"You are our natural ally," he protested. "We need your help now. You
know very well that with a slip of the tongue I could change the whole
situation."

"Somehow," she said, "I do not think that you are likely to make that
slip."

"Why not?" he protested. "I begin to understand Mannering's firmness now.
You are one of the ropes which hold him to this petty life--to this
philandering amongst the flower-pots. You are one of the ropes I want to
cut. Why not, indeed? I think that I could do it."

"Do you want a bribe?"

"I want Mannering."

"So do I!"

"He can belong to you none the less for belonging to us politically."

"Possibly! But I prefer him here. As a recluse he is adorable. I do not
want him to go through the mill."

"You don't understand his importance to us," Borrowdean declared. "This
is really no light affair. Rochester and Mellors both believe in him.
There is no limit to what he might not ask."

"He has told me a dozen times," she said, "that he never means to sit in
Parliament again."

"There is no reason why he should not change his mind," Borrowdean
answered. "Between us, I think that we could induce him."

"Perhaps," she answered. "Only I do not mean to try."

"I wish I could make you understand," he said impatiently, "that I am in
deadly earnest."

"You threaten?"

"Don't call it that."

"Very well, then," she declared, "I will tell him the truth myself."

"That," he answered