Lord Redford shrugged his shoulders.

“Perhaps,” he said, “but I am very sure of this.  There is nothing so great about the man as his folly.”

Berenice smiled.

“We shall see,” she said.  “Personally, I believe that Sir Leslie would find his epitaph a little previous.  I saw a great deal of Lawrence Mannering in the country, and I think that I understand him as well as either of you.  I believe that his day will come.”

“Well, all I can say is,” Lord Redford pronounced, “that I very much wish you had left him down at his country home.  Between you you have created a very serious situation.  I must go up to town to-morrow and see Manningham.  In the meantime, Leslie, I shall leave those reports severely alone.  We must ignore Mannering altogether.”

Berenice turned away with a smile at her lips.  She had a very little opinion of Lord Redford and his following.  Already she saw the man whose career they counted finished, at the head of a new and greater party.  There were plenty of clever men of the coming generation, plenty of room for compromises, for the formation of a great national party out of the scattered units of a disunited opposition.  She believed Mannering strong enough to do this.  She saw in it greater possibilities than might have been forthcoming even if he had been chosen to lead the somewhat ragged party represented by Lord Redford and his followers.  For the rest, she had been very near the success she so desired.  Only an accident had robbed her of victory.  If once they had reached the rose-garden she knew that she would have triumphed.

As her maid took off her jewellery that night she smiled at herself in the glass.  She was thinking of that moment on the terrace.  The glow had not wholly faded from her face—­she saw herself with her long, slender neck and smooth, unwrinkled complexion, still beautiful, still a woman to be loved.  Her maid ventured to whisper a word of respectful compliment.  Truly Madame La Duchesse was growing younger!

* * * * *

What strange whim, or evil fate, had turned his feet in that direction?  Mannering often tried to trace backwards the workings of his mind that night, but he never wholly succeeded.  He reached London about eleven, and sent his man home with his luggage, intending merely to call in at the club for letters.  But afterwards he remembered only that he had strolled aimlessly along homewards, thinking deeply, and not particularly careful as to his direction.  Even then he would have passed the house in Sloane Gardens without looking up, but for the civil “Good-night, sir,” of a coachman sitting on the box of a small brougham drawn up against the kerb.  He raised his head to return the salute, and realized at once where he was.  Almost at the same moment the front door opened, and behind a glow of light in the hall he saw a familiar figure in the act of passing out to her carriage.  The street was well lit, and he was almost opposite a lamp-post.  She recognized him at once.