public
life impossible. Not even your subtlety, Borrowdean, could remove it. I
do not even wish it removed. I mean to live my own life, and not to be
pitchforked back into politics to suit the convenience of a few
adventurous office-seekers, and the Duchess of Lenchester!"

"Mannering!"

But Mannering had gone.

* * * * *

Borrowdean felt that this was a trying day. After a battle with Mannering
he was face to face with an angry woman, to whose presence an imperious
little note had just summoned him. Berenice was dressed for a royal
dinner party, and she had only a few minutes to spare. Nevertheless she
contrived to make them very unpleasant ones for Borrowdean.

"The affair was entirely an accident," he pleaded.

"It was nothing of the sort," she answered, bluntly. "I know you too well
for that. Your bringing him here without warning was an unwarrantable
interference with my affairs."

Borrowdean could hold his own with men, but Berenice in her own room,
a wonderful little paradise of soft colourings and luxury so perfectly
chosen that it was rather felt than seen; Berenice, in her marvellous
gown, with the necklace upon her bosom and the tiara flashing in her dark
hair, was an overwhelming opponent. Borrowdean was helpless. He could not
understand the attack itself. He failed altogether to appreciate its
tenour.

"Forgive me," he protested, "but I did not know that you had any plans.
All that you told us on your return from Blakely was that you had failed.
So far as you were concerned the matter seemed to me to be over, and with
it, I imagined, your interest in Mannering. I brought him here--"

"Well?"

"Because I wished him to know who you were. I wished him to understand
the improbability of your ever again returning to Blakely."

"You are telling the truth now, at any rate," she remarked, curtly, "or
what sounds like the truth. Why did you trouble in the matter at all?
Where I have failed you are not likely to succeed."

Borrowdean smiled for the first time.

"I have still some hopes of doing so," he admitted.

The Duchess glanced at the little Louis Seize time-piece, and hesitated.

"You had better abandon them," she said. "Lawrence Mannering may be
wrong, or he may be right, but he believes in his choice. He has no
ambition. You have no motive left to work upon."

Borrowdean shook his head.

"You are wrong, Duchess," he remarked, simply. "I never believed in
Ma