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Berenice was a little annoyed. It was the hour before dressing for dinner which she always devoted to repose—the hour saved from the stress of the day which had helped towards keeping her the young woman she certainly was. Yet Borrowdean's message was too urgent to ignore. She suffered her maid to wrap some sort of loose gown about her, and received him in her own study.
"My dear Sir Leslie," she said, a little reproachfully, "was this really necessary? You know that after half-past six I am practically a person not existing—until dinner time!"
"I should not have ventured to intrude upon you," Borrowdean said, quickly, "if the circumstances had not been altogether exceptional. I know your habits too well. I have just come from Mannering."
"From Mannering—yes!"
"Duchess," Borrowdean said, "have you—forgive a blunt question—but have you any influence over him?"
Berenice was silent for several moments.
"You ask me rather a hard question," she said. "A few months ago I think that I should have said yes. To-day—I am not sure. What has happened? Is anything wrong with him?"
"Nothing, except that he seems to have gone mad," Borrowdean said, bitterly. "I went to him to-day to get him to fix the dates for his meetings at Glasgow and Leeds. What do you think his answer was?"
"Don't tell me that he wants to back out!" Berenice exclaimed. "Don't tell me that!"
"Almost as bad! He told me quite coolly that he was not prepared finally to set out his views upon the question until he had completed a course of personal investigation in some of the Northern centres of trade, to which he had committed himself."
Berenice looked bewildered.
"But what on earth does he mean?" she exclaimed. "Surely he knows all that there is to be known. His mastery of statistics is something wonderful."
"What he means no man save himself can even surmise," Borrowdean answered. "He told me that he had had information of a state of distress in some of our Northern towns—Newcastle and Hull he mentioned, and some of the Lancashire places—which had simply appalled him. He was determined to verify it personally, and to commit himself to nothing further until he had done so. And he even asked me if I could not find him a pair until the end of the session, so that he could get away at once. I was simply dumbfounded. A pair for Mannering!"
Berenice rose to her feet. She walked up and down the little room restlessly.
"Sir Leslie," she said at last, "I am not sure whether I have what you would call any influence over Mr. Mannering now or not. I might have had but for you!"
"For me?" Borrowdean exclaimed.
"Yes. It was you who told me of—of—that woman," she said, haughtily, but with the colour rising almost to her temples. "After that, of course things were different between us. We are scarcely upon such terms at present as would justify my interference."
Borrowdean dropped his eyeglass, and swung it deliberately by its black ribbon. He looked steadily at Berenice, but his eyes seemed to travel past her.
"My dear Duchess," he said, quietly, "the game of life is a great one to play, and we who would keep our hands upon the board must of necessity make sacrifices. It is your duty to disregard in this instance your feelings towards Mannering. You must consider only his feelings towards you. They are such, I believe, as to give you a hold over him. You must make use of that hold for the sake of a great cause."
Berenice raised her eyebrows.
"Indeed! You seem to forget, Sir Leslie, that my share in this game, as you call it, must always be a passive one. I have no office to gain, no rewards to reap. Why should I commit myself to an unpleasant task for the sake of you and your friends?"
"It is your party," he protested. "Your party as much as ours."
"Granted," she answered. "Yet who are the responsible members of it? You know my opinion of Mannering as a politician. I would sooner follow him blindfold than all the others with my eyes open. Whatever he may lack, he is the most honest and right-seeing politician who ever entered the House."
"He lacks but one thing," Borrowdean said, "the mechanical adjustment of the born politician to party matters. There was never a time when absolute unity and absolute force were so necessary. If he is going to play the intelligent inquirer, if he falters for one moment in his wholesale condemnation of this scheme, he loses the day for himself and for us. The one thing which the political public never forgives is the man who stops to think."
"What do you want me to do?" Berenice asked.
"To go to him and find out what he means, what influences have been at work, what is underneath it all. Warn him of the danger of even appearing doubtful, or for a moment lukewarm. The one person whom the public will not have in politics is the trifler. Think how many there have been, brilliant men, too, who have lost their places through a single false step, a single year, a month of dilettantism. Remind him of them. The man who moves in a great cause may move slowly, if you will, but he must move all the time. Remind him, too, that he is risking the one great chance of his life!"
"He is to be Premier, then?" she asked.
"Yes! There is no alternative!"
"Very well, then," she said, "I will go. I make no promises, mind. I will listen to what he has to say. I will put our view of the situation before him. But I make no promises. It is possible, even, that I shall come to his point of view, whatever it may be."
Borrowdean smiled.
"I have no fear of that," he declared, "but at least it would be something to know what this point of view is. You will find him in a queer mood. That little fool of a niece of his has been getting in with a fast set, and making the money fly. You have heard of her last escapade at Bristow?"
Berenice nodded.
"Yes," she said. "I went there this morning directly I had your note. I feel rather self-reproachful about Clara Mannering. I meant to have looked after her more. She is rather an uninteresting young woman, though, and I am afraid I have let her drift away."
"She will be all right with a little looking after," Borrowdean said. "Forgive me, but it is getting late."
"I will go at once," she said.
Afterwards she wondered often at that strange, uncertain fluttering of the heart, the rush and glow of feelings warmer than any which had lately stirred her, which seemed in those first few minutes of their being together, to make an altered woman of her. Mannering, as he entered the room, pale and listless, was conscious at once of a foreign element in it, something which stirred his somewhat slow-beating pulse, too, which seemed to bring back to him a flood of delicious memories, the perfume of his rose-gardens at evening, the soft night music of his wind-stirred cedars. She had thrown aside her opera cloak. The delicate lines of her bust seemed to have expanded with the unusual rise and fall of her bosom. A faint rose-tint flush of streaming colour had stained the ivory whiteness of her skin—her eyes as they sought his were soft, almost liquid. They met so seldom alone—and she was alone now with him in the room which was so characteristically his own, a room with many indications of his constant presence, which one by one she had been realizing with curiously quickened pulses during the few minutes of waiting. On her way here, driving in an open victoria, through the soft summer evening, she had seemed to be pursued everywhere by a new world of sensuous suggestions. Of the many carriages which she had passed, hers alone seemed to savour of loneliness. She was the only beautiful woman who sat alone and companionless. In a momentary block she had seen a man in a neighbouring hansom slip his hand, a strong, brown, well-looking hand, under the apron, to hold for a moment the fingers of the woman who sat by his side—Berenice had caught the answering smile, she had seen him lean forward and whisper something which had brought a deeper flush into her own cheeks and a look into her eyes, half amused, half tender. These were rare moments with her, these moments of sentiment—perhaps for that reason all the more dangerous. She forgot almost the cause of her coming. She remembered only that she was alone with the one man whose voice had the power to thrill her, whose touch would call up into life the great hidden forces of her own passionate nature. The memory of all other things passed away from her like a cloud gone from the face of the sun. She leaned towards him. His face was full of wonder—wonder, and the coming joy.
"Berenice!" he exclaimed.
She let herself drift down the surging tide of this suddenly awakened passion. She held out her arms and pressed her lips on his as he caught her.
Presently she pushed him gently away—held him there at arm's length.
"This is too absurd," she murmured, and drew him once more towards her with a choking little laugh. "I came for something quite different!"
"What does it matter what you came for, so long as you stay," he answered. "Say that you came to bring a glimpse of paradise to a lonely man!"
She disengaged herself, and her long white fingers strayed mechanically to her tumbled hair. The elegant precision of her toilette had given place to a most distracting disarray. She felt her cheeks burning still, and the lace at her bosom was all crushed.
"And I was on my way to a dinner party," she whispered, with humorously uplifted eyebrows. "I must drive back home, and—and—"
"And what?" he demanded.
"And send an excuse," she declared, demurely. "I am not equal to a family dinner party."
"And afterwards?"
She smiled.
"Would you like," she asked, "to take me out to dinner?"
"Would I like!"
"Go and change, and call for me in half an hour. We can go somewhere where we are not likely to be seen," she said, softly. "I must cover myself up in my cloak. Whatever will Perkins say? Please remember that I have no hat."
He held her hands and looked into her eyes.
"Don't go for one moment," he pleaded. "I want to realize it. I want to feel sure of you."
The gravity of his manner was for a moment reflected in her tone.
"I think," she said, "that you may feel sure. There are things which we may have to say to one another—presently—but—"
He stooped and kissed her fingers.