“I believe,” she said, “that the Duchess still has hopes of Mr. Mannering.”

“She is a persistent woman,” Blanche answered.  “They say that she generally succeeds.  Let us go in.”

* * * * *

Berenice was listening to Mannering’s account of his last few days’ electioneering.

“The whole affair came upon me like a thunderclap,” he told her.  “Richard Fardell found it out somehow, and he took me to see Parkins.  But it was too late.  Polden had hold of the story and meant to use it.  I never imagined but that Parkins had been talking and this journalist had got hold of him by accident.  Now I understand that it was Borrowdean who was pulling the strings.”

She nodded.

“He traced Parkins out some time ago, and knew exactly where he was to be found.”

“I think,” Mannering said, “that it is time Borrowdean and I came to some understanding.  I haven’t said anything about it yet.  I don’t exactly know what to say now.  You are a very generous woman.”

She sighed.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think that.  Sir Leslie is a schemer of the class I detest.  I listened to him once, and I have regretted it ever since.  Yet you must remember this!  If it had not been for him you would have been at Blakely to-day.”

His thoughts carried him backwards with a rush.  Once more the thrall of that quiet life of passionless sweetness held him.  He looked back upon it curiously, as a man who has passed into another country.  Days of physical exaltation, alone with the sun and the wind and all the murmuring voices of Nature, God’s life he had called it then.  And now!  The stress of battle was hard upon him.  He was fighting in the front ranks, a somewhat cheerless battle, fighting for great causes with inefficient weapons.  But he could not go back.  Life had become a more strenuous, a more vital, a less beautiful thing!  He felt himself ageing.  All the inevitable sadness of the man in touch with the world’s great problems was in his heart.  But he could not go back.

“Yes,” he said, quietly, “I owe that much to Borrowdean.”

“There is a question,” she said, “which I have wanted to ask you.  Do you regret, or are you glad to have been forced out once more upon the world’s stage?”

He smiled.

“How can I answer you?” he asked.  “At Blakely I was as happy as I knew how to be, and until you came I was content!  But to-day, well, there are different things.  How can I answer your question, indeed?  Tell me what happiness means!  Tell me whether it is an ignoble or a praiseworthy state!”

Berenice was silent.  Into her face there had come a sudden gravity.  Mannering, glancing towards her, was at once conscious of the change.  He saw the weariness so often and zealously repressed, the ageing of her face, the sudden triumph of the despair which in the quiet moments chilled her heart.  It seemed to him that for that moment they had come into some closer communion.  He bent over towards her.