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Mannering hated dinner parties, but this one had been a necessity. Nevertheless, if he had known who his companion for the evening was fated to be he would most certainly have stayed away. Her first question showed him that she had no intention of ignoring memories which to him were charged with the most subtle pain.
He looked down the table, and back again into her face.
"You are quite right," he said. "This is different. We cannot compare. We can judge only by effect—the effect upon ourselves."
"Can you be analytical and yet remain within the orbit of my understanding?" she asked, with a faint smile. "If so, I should like to know exactly how you feel about it all."
He passed a course with a somewhat weary gesture of refusal, and leaned back in his chair.
"You are comprehensive—as usual," he remarked. "Just then I was wondering whether the perfume of these banks of hot-house flowers—I don't know what they are—was as sweet as the odour of the salt from the creeks, or my roses when the night wind touched them."
"You were wondering! And what have you decided?"
"Ah, I must not say. In any case you would not agree with me. Wasn't it you who once scoffed at my idyll in the wilderness?"
"I do not think that I believe in idylls, nowadays," she answered. "One risks so many disappointments when one believes in anything."
He raised his eyebrows.
"You did not talk like this at Blakely," he remarked.
"I am nearly a year older," she answered, "and a year wiser."
"You pain me," he answered, with a little sigh. "You are a person of intelligence, and you talk of growing wiser with the years. Don't you know that the only supreme wisdom is the wisdom of the child? Our inherent ignorance is fed and nourished by experience."
"You are hiding yourself," she remarked, "behind a fence of words—words that mean less than nothing! I don't suppose that even you would hesitate to admit that you have come into a larger world. You may have to pay for it. We all do. But at any rate it is an atmosphere which breeds men."
"And changes women," he murmured, under his breath.
She did not speak to him for several moments. Then the alteration in her tone and manner was almost marked.
"You mentioned Blakely a few minutes ago," she said. "I wonder whether you remember our discussion there upon precisely what has come to pass."
"Perfectly!"
"I remember that in those days," she continued, reflectively, "you were very firm indeed, or was it my poor arguments that were at fault? Your vegetable and sentimental existence was a part of yourself. Ambition! You had forgotten what it was. Duty! You spouted individualism by the hour. Gratify my curiosity, won't you? Tell me what made you change your mind?"
Mannering was silent for a moment. A close observer might have noticed a certain alteration in his face. A touch of the coming weariness was already there.
"I have never changed my mind," he answered, quietly. "My inclinations to-day are what they have always been."
She dropped her voice a little.
"You puzzle me," she said, softly. "Do you mean that it was your sense of duty which was awakened?"
"No, I do not mean that," he answered. "Forgive me—but I cannot tell you what I do mean. Circumstances brought me here against my will."
"You talk like a slave," she said, lightly enough. She, too, was brave. She drank wine to keep the colour in her cheeks, and she told herself that the pain at her heart was nothing. Nevertheless, some words of Borrowdean's were mocking her all the while.
"We are all slaves," he answered. "The folly of it all is when we stop to think. Then we realize it."
Their conversation was like a strangled thing. Neither made any serious effort to re-establish it. It was a great dinner party, chiefly political, and long drawn out. Afterwards came a reception, and Mannering was at once surrounded. It was nearly midnight when by chance they came face to face again. She touched him with her fan, and leaned aside from the little group by whom she was surrounded.
"Are you very much occupied, Mr. Mannering," she asked, lightly, "or could you spare me a moment?"
He stopped short. Whatever surprise he may have felt he concealed.
"I am entirely at your service, Duchess," he answered. "Mr. Harrison will excuse me, I am sure," he added, turning to his companion.
She rested her fingers upon his arm. The house belonged to a relative of hers, and she knew where to find a quiet spot. When they were alone she did not hesitate for a moment.
"Lawrence," she said, quietly, "will you imagine for a moment that we are back again at Blakely?"
"I would to God we were!" he answered, impulsively. "That is—if you wish it too!"
She did not answer at once. The sudden abnegation of his reserve took her by surprise. She had to readjust her words.
"At least," she said, "there are many things about Blakely which I regret all the time. You know, of course, the chief one, our own altered selves. I know, Lawrence, that I need to ask your forgiveness. I came there under an assumed name, and I will admit that my coming was part of a scheme between Ronalds, Rochester and myself. Well, I am ready to ask your forgiveness for that. I don't think you ought to refuse it me. It doesn't alter anything that happened. It doesn't even affect it. You must believe that!"
"I believe it, if you tell me so," he answered.
"I do tell you," she declared. "I can explain it all. I am longing to have it all off my mind. But first of all, there is just one thing which I want to ask you."
His face as he looked towards her gave her almost a shock. Very little was left of his healthy colouring. Already there were lines under his eyes, and he was certainly thinner. And there was something else which almost appalled her. There was fear in his manner. He sat like a man waiting for sentence, a man fore-doomed.
"I want to know," she said, "what has brought you—here. I want to know what manner of persuasion has prevailed—when mine was so ineffectual. Don't think that I am not glad that you decided as you did. I am glad—very. You are in your rightful place, and I am only too thankful to hear about you, and read—and watch. But—we are jealous creatures, we women, you know, and I want to know whose and what arguments prevailed, when mine were so very insufficient."
He answered her without hesitation, but his tone was dull and spiritless.
"I cannot tell you!"
There was a short silence. She gathered her skirts for a moment in her hand as though about to rise, but apparently changed her mind. She waited for some time, and then she spoke again.
"Perhaps you think that I ought not to ask?"
He looked at her hopelessly.
"No, I don't think that. You have a right to ask. But it doesn't alter things, does it? I can't tell you."
"You asked me to marry you."
"It was at Blakely. We were so far out of the world—such a different world. I think that I had forgotten all that I wished to forget. Everything seemed possible there."
"You mean that you would have married me and told me nothing of circumstances in your life, so momentous that they have practically exercised in this matter of your return to politics a compelling influence over you?"
"I am sure," he said, "that I should not have told you!"
His unhappiness moved her. She still lingered. She drew a little breath, and she went a good deal further than she had meant to go.
"It has been suggested to me," she said, "that your reappearance was due to a woman's influence. Is this true?"
"A woman had something to do with it," he admitted.
"Who is she?"
"Her name," he answered, "is Blanche Phillimore. It was the person to whom you yourself alluded."
The Duchess maintained her self-control. She was quite pale, however, and her tone was growing ominously harder.
"Is she a connection of yours?"
"No!"
"Is there anything which you could tell me about her?"
"No!"
"Yet at her bidding you have done—what you refused me."
"I had no choice! Borrowdean saw to that," he remarked, bitterly.
She rose to her feet. She was pale, and her lips were quivering, but she was splendidly handsome.
"What sort of a man are you, Lawrence Mannering?" she asked, steadily. "You play at idealism, you asked me to marry you. Yet all the time there was this background."
"It was madness," he admitted. "But remember it was Mrs. Handsell whom I asked to be my wife."
"What difference does that make? She was a woman, too, I suppose, to be honoured—or insulted—by your choice!"
"There was no question of insult, I think."
She looked at him steadfastly. Perhaps for a moment her thoughts travelled back to those unforgotten days in the rose-gardens at Blakely, to the man whose delicate but wholesome joy in the wind and the sun and the flowers, the sea-stained marshes and the windy knolls where they had so often stood together, she could not forget. His life had seemed to her then so beautiful a thing. The elementary purity of his thoughts and aspirations were unmistakable. She told herself passionately that there must be a way out.
"Lawrence," she said, "we are man and woman, not boy and girl. You asked me to marry you once, and I hesitated, only because of one thing. I do not wish to look into any hidden chambers of your life. I wish to know nothing, save of the present. What claim has this woman Blanche Phillimore upon you?"
"It is her secret," he answered, "not mine alone."
"She lives in your house—through her you are a poor man—through her you are back again, a worker in the world."
"Yes!"
"It must always be so?"
"Yes."
"And you have nothing more to say?"
"If I dared," he said, raising his eyes to hers, "I would say—trust me! I am not exactly—one of the beasts of the field."
"Will you not trust me, then? I am not a foolish girl. I am a woman. You may destroy an ideal, but there would be something left."
"I can tell you no more."
"Then it is to be good-bye?"
"If you say so!"
She turned slowly away. He watched her disappear. Afterwards, with a curious sense of unreality, he remained quite still, his eyes still fixed upon the portiere through which she had passed.