“You must mean Mr. Lindsay,” Clara answered.  “I have no idea.  At Blakely, I suppose.”

“If I were you,” Berenice said, as she rose, “I should write to him to come up and look after you.  You need it!”

She nodded pleasantly and took her leave.  Clara threw herself into a chair and rang the bell.

“Perkins,” she said, “I have had no sleep and no breakfast.  What should you recommend?”

“An egg beaten up in milk, miss,” the man suggested, “same as I’ve just taken Mr. Mannering.”

“Is my uncle up?” Clara asked.

“Not yet, miss,” the man answered; “He is just dressing.”

Clara nodded.

“Very well.  Please get me what you said, and if Sir Leslie Borrowdean calls I want to see him at once.”

“Sir Leslie is in the study now, miss,” the man answered.  “I showed him in there because I thought he would want to see Mr. Mannering, but he asked for you.”

“Will you say that I shall be there in three minutes,” Clara said.

The three minutes became rather a long quarter of an hour, but Clara had used the time well.  When she entered the library she had changed her dress, rearranged her hair, and by some means or another had lost her unnatural pallor.  Sir Leslie greeted her a little gravely,

“Glad to see you looking so fit,” he remarked.  “They did us a bit too well down at Bristow, I thought.  It’s all very well for you children,” he continued, with a smile, “but when a man gets to my time of life he misses a night’s rest.”

She smiled.

“You don’t call yourself old, Sir Leslie!” she remarked.

“Well, I’m not young, although I like to think I am,” he answered.  “I’m afraid there’s pretty nearly a generation between us, Miss Clara.  By the bye, where’s your uncle this morning?”

“Getting up,” she answered.  “He did not go to bed until after five, Perkins tells me.  He brought some one home with him from Dorchester’s reception, or some one he picked up afterwards, and they seem to have sat up talking all night.”

Borrowdean was interested.

“You have no idea who it was, I suppose?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“None at all.  Perkins had never seen him before.  When do you poor creatures get your holiday, Sir Leslie?”

He smiled.

“The session will be over in about three weeks,” he answered, “unless we defeat the Government before then.  Your uncle has been hitting them very hard lately.  I think before long we shall be in office.”

“Politics,” she said, “seems to be rather a greedy sort of business.  You are always trying to turn the other side out, aren’t you?”

“You must remember,” he answered, “that politics is rather a one-sided sort of affair.  The party which is in makes a very comfortable living out of it, and we who are out have to scrape along as best we can.  Rather hard upon people like your uncle and myself, who are, comparatively speaking, poor men.  That reminds me,” he said, bringing out his pocket-book, “I thought that I had better bring you these little documents.”