you want is rest and amusement."

Mannering laughed, and showed him out. When he returned to his study
Hester was there, just returned from a visit to the theatre with some
friends. She threw off her wrap and looked through the letters which had
come by the evening's post.

"Did you see this from Richard Fardell?" she asked him. "Parkins is dead
at last. Fardell says that he has been quite childish for the last
eighteen months! Are you ill?" she broke off, suddenly.

Mannering, who was lying back in his easy-chair, white almost to the
lips, roused himself with an effort. He poured out a glass of wine and
drank it off.

"I'm not ill," he said, with rather a weak smile, "but I'm a little
tired."

"Who was your visitor?" she asked.

"A doctor. I felt a little run down, so I sent for him. Of course he told
me the usual story. Rest and a holiday."

She came and sat on the arm of his chair. Every year she grew less and
less like her mother. Her hair was smoothly brushed back from her
forehead, and her features were distinctly intellectual. She was by far
the best secretary Mannering had ever had.

"You need some one to look after you," she said, decisively.

"It seems to me that you do that pretty well," he answered. "I don't want
any one else."

"You need some one with more authority than I have," she said. "You ought
to marry."

"Marry!" he gasped.

"Yes."

"Any particular person?"

"Of course! You know whom."

Mannering did not reply at once. He was looking steadfastly into the
fire, and the gloom in his face was unlightened.

"Hester," he said, at last, in a very low tone, "I will tell you, if you
like, a short, a very short chapter of my life. It lasted a few hours, a
day or so, more or less. Yet of course it has made a difference always."

"I should like to hear it," she whispered.

"The two great events of my life," he said, "came together. I was engaged
to be married to the Duchess of Lenchester at the same time that I found
myself forced to sever my connexion with the Liberal party. You know, of
course, that the Duchess has always been a great figure in politics. She
has ambitions, and her political creed is almost a part of the religion
of her life. She looked upon my apostasy with horror. It came between us
at the very moment when I thought that I had found in life the one great
and beautiful thing."

"If ever she let it come between you," Hester interrupted, softly, "I
believe that she ha