She leaned a little towards him.

“What would?” she asked, earnestly.

He hesitated.

“Well,” he said, “I think I could tell you that!”

She held up her hand.

“Stop, please,” she said.  “I want to ask you something else.  Are you Lawrence’s enemy?”

“I?  Why, of course not!”

“Then where do you come in?” she asked, bluntly.  “You couldn’t persuade me that it is interest on my account which brings you here and makes you tell me these things.  You don’t care a button for me.”

Borrowdean took her hand and leaned forward in his chair.  She snatched it away.

“Oh, rot!” she exclaimed.  “I may be a fool, but I’m not quite fool enough for that.  I’m simply a useful person for the moment in some scheme of yours, and I just want to know what that scheme is.  That’s all!  I’m not the sort of woman you’d waste a moment with, except for some purpose of your own.  You’ve proved that.  You wormed my story out of me very cleverly, but I haven’t quite forgotten it yet, you know.  And to tell you the truth,” she continued, “you’re not my sort, either.  You and Lawrence Mannering are something of the same kidney after all, though he’s worth a dozen of you.  You’ve neither of you any time for play in the world, and that sort of man doesn’t appeal to me.  Now where do you come in?”

Borrowdean looked at her thoughtfully.  He had the air of a man a trifle piqued.  Perhaps for the first time he realized that Blanche Phillimore was not altogether an unattractive-looking woman.  If she had desired to stir him from his indifference she could not have chosen any more effectual means.

“I am not going to argue with you,” he said, quietly.  “I have ambitions, it is true, and the world is not exactly a playground for me.  Nevertheless, I am not an ascetic like Mannering.  The world, the flesh and the devil are very much to me what they are to other men.  But in a sense you have cornered me, and you shall have the truth.  I want to marry the Duchess of Lenchester myself.”

She nodded.

“That’s right,” she said.  “Now we know where we are.  You want to marry the Duchess, and therefore you don’t want her to have Lawrence.  You think that I can stop it, and as I don’t want him married, either, you come to me.  That is reasonable.  Now how can I prevent it?”

“By a slight variation from your story,” he answered.  “In fact, words are not needed.  A suggestion only would be enough, and circumstances,” he added, glancing around, “are strongly in favour of that suggestion.”

“You mean—­”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Mannering is security for your lease,” he remarked.  “You pay in his cheques to your bank every quarter.  He occupies just that position which in a general way is capable of one explanation only.”

“Well?”

“Let the Duchess believe him, or continue to believe him, to be an ordinary man—­instead of a fool—­and she will never marry him.”