“Thank you for your warning,” he said.  “I will be careful.”

“Tell me,” she said, “as a friend, what are your plans?  Forget that I am interested in politics altogether.  I simply want to know how you are spending your time for the next few months.”

“It depends upon them,” he answered, looking downwards into the valley, where Lord Redford and Borrowdean were walking side by side.  “If they ask me to resign my seat I shall go North again, and it is just possible that I might come back into the House as a labour member.  On the other hand, if they are content with such support as I can give them, and to have me on the fence at present so far as the tariff question is concerned, why, I shall go back and do the best I can for them.”

“You are not quite won over to the other side yet, then,” she remarked, smiling.

“Not yet,” he answered.  “If ever there was an honest doubter, I am one.  If I had never left my study, England could not have contained a more rabid opponent of any change in our fiscal policy than I. I am like a small boy who is absolutely sure that he has worked out his sum correctly, but finds the answer is not the one which his examiner expects.  There is something wrong somewhere.  I want, if I can, to discover it.  I only want the truth!  I don’t see why it should be so hard to find, why figures and common sense should clash entirely and horribly with existing facts.”

“You wore dun-coloured spectacles when you took your walks abroad,” she said, smiling.  “No one else seems to have discovered so distressing a state of affairs as you have spoken of.”

“Because they never looked beneath the surface,” he answered.  “I myself might have failed to understand if I had not been shown.  Remember that our workingman of the better class does not go marching through the streets with an unemployed banner and a tin cup when he is in want.  He takes his half wages and closes the door upon his sufferings.  God help him!”

“Adieu, politics,” she declared, with a shrug of the shoulders.  “Isn’t that Clara playing croquet with Major Bristow?  I wish I didn’t dislike that man so much.  I hate to see the child with him.”

Mannering sighed.

“Poor Clara!” he said.  “I am afraid I have left her a good deal to herself lately.”

“I am afraid you have,” she agreed, a little gravely.  “May I give you a word of advice?”

“You know that I should be grateful for it,” he declared.

“Be sure that she never goes to the Bristows again, and ask her whether she has any other card debts.  It may be my fancy, but I don’t like the way that man hangs about her, and looks at her.  I am sure that she does not like him, and yet she never seems to have the courage to snub him.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” he said.  “I will speak to her to-day.”

“I don’t know where I am going, or what I shall do for the autumn,” she continued, with a little sigh, “but if you like to trust Clara with me I will look after her.  I think that she needs a woman.  Yes, I thought so.  Redford and Sir Leslie are waiting for you.  Go and have it out with them, my friend.”