“No cause to complain!” she repeated, as though to herself.  “No, I suppose not.  And yet, how much the better off do you think I am, Lawrence?  I had friends before of some sort or another.  Some of them pretended to like me, even if they didn’t.  I did as I chose.  I lived as I liked.  I was my own mistress.  And now—­well, there is no one!  I enjoy the respectability of your name, the privilege of knowing your friends, the ability to pay my bills, but I should go stark mad if it wasn’t for Hester.  I gave myself away to you, I know.  You married me for pity, I know.  But what in God’s name do I get out of it?”

A note of real passion quivered in her tone.  Mannering looked down at her helplessly, taken wholly aback, without the power for a moment to formulate his thoughts.  There was a touch of colour in her pale cheeks, her eyes were lit with an unusual fire.  The faint moonlight was kind to her.  Her features, thinner than they had been, seemed to have gained a certain refinement.  She reminded him more than ever before of the Blanche of many years ago.  He answered her kindly, almost tenderly.

“I am very sorry,” he said, “if I have caused you any suffering.  What I did I did for the best.  I don’t think that I quite understood, and I thought that you knew—­what had come into my life.”

“I knew that you cared for her, of course,” she answered, with a little sob, “but I did not know that you meant to nurse it—­that feeling.  I thought that when we were married you would try to care for me—­a little.  I—­Here are the others!”

Lord Redford, who had failed to amuse Berenice, and who had a secret preference for the woman who generally amused him, broke up their tete-a-tete.  He led Blanche away, and Mannering followed with Berenice.

“What does this change in your wife mean?” she asked, abruptly.

“Change?” he repeated.

“Yes!  She watches us!  If it were not too absurd, one would believe her jealous.  Of course, it is not my business to ask you on what terms you are with your wife, but—­”

“You know what terms,” he interrupted.

Her manner softened.  She looked at him for a moment and then her eyes dropped.

“I am rather a hateful woman!” she said, slowly.  “I wish I had not said that.  I don’t think we have managed things very cleverly, Lawrence.  Still, I suppose life is made up of these sorts of idiotic blunders.”

“Mine,” he said, “has been always distinguished by them.”

“And mine,” she said, “only since I came to Blakely, and learnt to talk nonsense in your rose-garden!  But come,” she added, more briskly, “we are breaking our compact.  We agreed to be friends, you know, and abjure sentiment.”

He nodded.

“It seemed quite easy then,” he remarked.

“And it is easy now!  It must be,” she added.  “I have scarcely congratulated you upon your election.  What it all means, and with which party you are going to vote, I scarcely know even now.  But I can at least congratulate you personally.”