her ground.

"Yes! I have told you the truth. And I am glad that I went. You are very
clever people, both of you, but you are spoiling your lives for the sake
of a little common sense. It was necessary for some one to interfere."

Mannering shook his head slowly.

"You meant kindly, Hester," he said, "but it was a mistake. The time when
that might have been possible has gone by. Neither she nor I can call
back the hand of time. The last two years have made an old man of me. I
have no longer my enthusiasm. I am in the whirlpool, and I must fight my
way through to the end."

She sat at his feet. He was still in the easy-chair into which he had
sunk on his first coming into the room. He had been speaking in the House
late, amidst all the excitement of a political crisis.

"Why fight alone," she murmured, "when she is willing to come to you?"

He shook his head.

"There would be conditions," he said, "and she would not understand. I
may be in office in a month with most of her friends in opposition. The
situation would be impossible!"

"Rubbish!" Hester declared. "The Duchess is too great a woman to lose so
utterly her sense of proportion. Don't you understand--that she loves
you?"

Mannering laughed bitterly.

"She must love a shadow, then!" he said, "for the man she knew does not
exist any longer. Poor little girl, are you disappointed?" he added, more
kindly. "I am sorry!"

"I am disappointed to hear you talking like this," she declared. "I will
not believe that it is more than a mood. You are overtired, perhaps!"

"Ay!" he said. "But I have been overtired for a long time. The strength
the gods give us lasts a weary while. You must send my excuses to the
Duchess, Hester. The fates are leading me another way."

"I won't do it," she sobbed. "You shall be reasonable! I will make you
go!"

He shook his head.

"If you could," he murmured, "you might alter the writing on one little
page of history. We defeated the Government to-night badly, and I am
going to Windsor to-morrow afternoon."

Hester rose to her feet and paced the room restlessly. Mannering had
spoken without exultation. His pallid face seemed to her to have grown
thin and hard. He saw himself the possible Prime Minister of the morrow
without the slightest suggestion of any sort of gratified ambition.

"I don't know whether to say that I am glad or not," Hester declared,
stopping once more by his side. "If you are going to shut yourself off