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Once again Mannering found himself in the over-scented, overheated room, which was perhaps of all places in the world the one he hated the most. Fresh from the wind-swept places of his country home, he found the atmosphere intolerable. After a few minutes' waiting he threw open the windows and leaned out. Hester was walking in the Square somewhere. He had a shrewd idea that she had been sent out of the way. With a restless impatience of her absence he awaited the interview which he dreaded.
Her mother's coming took him a little by surprise. She seemed to have laid aside all her usual customs. She entered the room quietly. She greeted him almost nervously. She was dressed, without at any rate any obvious attempt to attract, in a plain black gown, and with none of the extravagances in which she sometimes delighted. Her usual boisterous confidence of manner seemed to have deserted her. Her face, without its skilful touches of rouge, looked thin, and almost peaked.
"I am so glad that you came, Lawrence," she said. "It was very good of you."
She glanced towards the opened windows, and he closed them at once.
"I am afraid," he said, "that you have not been well!"
There was a touch of her old self in the hardness of her low laugh.
"It is remorse!" she declared. "I think that for once in my life I have permitted myself to think! It is a great mistake. One loses confidence when one realizes what a beast one is."
He waited in silence. It seemed to him the best thing. She sat down a little wearily. He remained standing a few feet away.
"I have given you away, Lawrence," she said, quietly.
"So," he remarked, "I understand."
"Hester has told you, of course. I am not blaming her. She did quite right. Only I should have told you myself. I wanted to be the first to assure you of this. Our secret is quite safe. The man—with whom I made a fool of myself—has given me his word of honour."
"Sir Leslie Borrowdean's—word of honour!" Mannering remarked, with slow scorn. "Do you know the man, I wonder?"
"I know that he wishes to be your friend, and not your enemy," she said.
"He chooses his friends for what they are worth to him," Mannering answered. "It is all a matter of self-interest. He has some idea of making me the stepping-stone to his advancement. I have a place just now in his scheme of life. But as for friendship! Borrowdean does not know the meaning of the word."
"You speak bitterly," she remarked.
"I know the man," he answered.
"Will you tell me," she asked, "what it is that he wants of you?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Is this worth discussing between us?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Very well, then, you shall know. He wants me to re-enter political life, to be the jackal to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him."
"To re-enter political life! And why don't you?"
Mannering turned abruptly round and looked her in the face. He had been gazing out of the window, wondering how long it would be before Hester returned.
"Why don't I!" he repeated, a little vaguely. "How can you ask me such a question as that?"
She was undisturbed. Again he marvelled at the change in her.
"Is it so very extraordinary a question?" she said. "I have often wondered whether you meant to content yourself with your present life always. It is scarcely worthy of you, is it? You were born to other things than to live the life of a country gentleman. You dabble in literature, they say, and poke your stick into politics through the pages of the reviews. Why don't you take your coat off and play the game?"
Mannering was silent for several moments. He was, however, meditating his own reply less than studying his questioner. Her attitude was amazing to him. She watched him all the time, frowning.
"You are not usually so tongue-tied," she remarked, irritably. "Have you nothing to say to me?"
"I am wondering," he said, quietly, "what has given birth to this sudden interest in my proceedings. What does it matter to you how my days are spent, or what manner of use I make of them?"
"There was a time—" she began.
"A time irretrievably past," he interrupted, shortly.
"I am not so sure!" she declared, doubtfully.
"What has Borrowdean to do with this?" he asked her, abruptly.
"Borrowdean?"
"Surely! Some one has been putting notions into your head."
"Why take that for granted?" she asked, equably. "The pity of the whole thing is obvious enough, isn't it? Sometimes I think that we were a pair of fools. We played into the hands of fate. We were brought face to face with a terrible situation. Instead of meeting it bravely we played the coward. Why don't you forget, Lawrence, as I have done? Take up your work again. Set a seal upon—that memory."
"I have outgrown my ambitions," he answered. "Life was hot enough in my veins then. Desire grows cold with the years. I am content."
"But I," she answered, "am not."
"We each chose our life," he reminded her.
"Perhaps. I am not satisfied with my choice. You may be with yours."
"I am."
She leaned over towards him.
"Once," she said, "you offered me what you called—atonement. I refused it. Just then it seemed horrible. Now that feeling has passed away. I am lonely, Lawrence, and I am weary of the sort of life I have been living. Supposing I asked you to make me that offer again?"
Mannering turned slowly towards her. He was not a man who easily showed emotion, but there were traces of it now in his face. The hand which rested on the back of his chair shook. There was in his eyes the look of a man who sees evil things.
"It is too late, Blanche," he said. "You cannot be in earnest?"
"Why not?" she murmured, dropping her eyes. "I am tired of my life. What you owed me then you owe me now. Why should it be too late? I am not an old woman yet, nor are you an old man, and I am weary of being alone."
Mannering walked to the window. His hand went to his forehead. It was damp and cold. He was afraid! If she were in earnest! And she spoke like a woman who knew her mind. She was always, he remembered, a creature of caprice. If she were really in earnest!
"We have drifted too far apart, Blanche," he said, making an effort to face the situation. "Years ago this might have been possible. To-day it would be a dismal failure. My ways are not yours. The life I lead would bore you to death."
"There is no reason why you should not alter it," she answered, calmly. "In fact, I should wish you to. Blakely all the year round would be an impossibility. You could come and live in London."
He looked at her fixedly.
"Have you forgotten?" he asked.
She covered her face with her hands for a moment. If indeed she really felt any emotion it passed quickly away, for when she looked up again there were no traces left.
"I have forgotten nothing," she declared, defiantly. "Only the horror and fear of it all has passed away. I don't see why I should suffer all my life. In fact, I don't mean to. I don't want to be a miserable, lonely old woman. I want a home, something different from this."
Mannering faced her gravely.
"Blanche," he said, "you are proposing something which would most surely ruin the rest of our lives. What we might have been to one another if things had been different it is hard to say. But this much is very certain. We belong now to different worlds. We have drifted apart with the years. Even the little we see of one another now is far from a pleasure to either of us. What you are suggesting would be simply suicidal."
She was silent. He watched her anxiously. As a rule her face was easy enough to read. To-day it was impenetrable. He could not tell what was passing behind that still, almost stony, look. Her silence forced him again into speech.
"You agree with me, surely, Blanche? You must agree with me?"
She raised her head.
"I am not sure that I do," she answered. "But at least I understand you. That is something! You want to go on as you are—apart from me. That is true, isn't it?"
"Yes!"
She nodded.
"At least you are candid. You want your liberty—unfettered. What are you willing to pay for it?"
He looked at her incredulously.
"I do not quite understand!" he said.
She laughed, and the laugh belonged to her old self.
"Indeed! I thought that I was explicit enough, brutally explicit, even. What have you to offer me in place of your name and yourself? What sacrifice are you prepared to make?"
He looked at her furtively, as though even then he doubted the significance of her words.
"You have already half my income," he said, slowly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"A thousand a year! What can one do on that? To live decently in town one needs much more."
"It is as much as I can offer," he remarked, stiffly.
"Then you should earn money," she declared. "It's easy enough for men with brains. Go back into politics instead of idling your time away down in Blakely. I mean it! I've no patience with men who have a right to a place in the world which they won't fill."
"Surely," he remonstrated, "I may be allowed to choose the manner of my life!"
"If you can afford to—yes," she answered. "But I want one of two things. The first seems to scare you to death even to think of. The second is more money—a good deal more money."
"But," he protested, "even if I did as you suggested, and went back into politics, it would be some time, if ever, before I should be any better off."
"I will wait until that time comes," she answered, "provided that when it does, you share with me."
Then Mannering understood.
"Upon my word," he exclaimed, "you are an apt conspirator indeed. All this time you have been fooling me. I even fancied—bah! How much is Borrowdean giving you for this?"
"Nothing at all," she answered, coolly. "It is my own sincere desire for your welfare which has prompted all that I have said to you. I am ambitious for you, Lawrence. I should like to see you Prime Minister. I am sure you could be if you tried. You are letting your talents rust, and I don't approve of it!"
The faint note of mockery in her tone was clearly apparent. Mannering found it hard to answer her calmly.
"Come," he said, "put it into plain words. What does it mean? What do you want?"
"Sir Leslie tells me," she said, raising her eyes and looking him in the face, "that his party is prepared to find you a safe seat to-morrow. I want you to give up your hermit's life and accept it."
"And the alternative?"
"You have it already before you. Your reception of it was not, I must admit, altogether flattering."
"I am allowed," he said, "some short space of time for consideration?"
"Until to-morrow, if you wish," she answered. "I imagine you know pretty well what you mean to do."
He picked up his hat and turned towards the door.
"Yes," he said, "I suppose I do!"