“I am not so sure,” Borrowdean answered, calmly.  “Between ourselves, I cannot see that your claim upon him amounts to very much.”

“Then you’re a fool!” she declared, brusquely.

“No, I’m not,” Borrowdean assured her, blandly.  “Now I fancy that I could tell you something which would surprise you very much.”

“Has he been making love to any one?” she asked, quickly.

“Something of the sort,” he admitted.  “Mannering is quixotic, of course, and that hermit life of his down in Norfolk has made him more so.  Now he has come back again into the world it is just possible that he may see things differently.  I flatter myself that I am a man of common sense.  I know how the whole affair seems to me, and I tell you frankly that I can see nothing from the point of view of honour to prevent Mannering marrying any woman he chooses.  I think it very possible that he may readjust his whole point of view.”

The woman looked around her, and outside, where her victoria was waiting.  At last she had attained to an environment such as she had all her life desired.  The very idea that at any moment it might be swept away sent a cold shiver through her.  Borrowdean had a trick of speaking convincingly.  And besides—­

“Who is the woman?” she asked.

“I had been wondering,” Borrowdean said, “whether it would not be better to tell you, so that you might be on your guard.  The woman is the Duchess of Lenchester.”

She stared at him.

“You’re in earnest?”

“Absolutely!”

Her face hardened.  Whatever other feelings she may have had for Mannering, she had lived so long with the thought that he belonged to her, at least as a wage-earning animal, a person whose province it was to make her ways smooth so far as his means permitted, that the thought of losing him stirred in her a dull, jealous anger.

“I’d stop it!” she declared.  “I’d go and tell her everything.”

“I am not sure,” Borrowdean continued, smoothly, “that that would be the best course.  Supposing that you were to tell her the story just as you told it to me.  It is just possible that her point of view might be mine.  She might regard Lawrence Mannering as a quixotic person, and endeavour to persuade him that your claim was scarcely so binding as he seems to imagine.  In any case, I do not think that your story would prevent her marrying him.”

“Then all I can say is that she is a woman with a very queer sense of right and wrong,” Mrs. Phillimore declared, angrily.

Borrowdean smiled.

“A woman,” he said, “who is fond of a man is apt to have her judgment a little warped.  The Duchess is a woman of fine perceptions and sound judgment.  But she is attracted by Lawrence Mannering.  She admires him.  He is the sort of person who appeals to her imagination.  These feelings might easily become, if they have not already developed into, something else.  And I tell you again that I do not believe your story would stop her from marrying him.”