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Updated: May 26, 2025
"Borrowdean, will you come this way?" LOVE versus POLITICS 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.
At that moment a puff of wind disturbed the papers by his side. A telegram would have fluttered away, but Blanche Mannering caught it at the edge of the table. She was handing it back, when a curious expression on Borrowdean's face inspired her with a sudden idea. She deliberately looked at the telegram, and her fingers stiffened upon it. His forward movement was checked.
She made one more effort. "I think," she said, "that as one grows older one parts the less readily with the few friends who count. I hope that you will change your mind." He bowed gravely, but he made no answer. Berenice took Borrowdean's arm and passed on. There was a little spot of colour in her cheeks. Borrowdean felt nerved to his enterprise.
That little creature is singing the true, uncorrupted song of life. He sings of the sunshine, the buoyant air; the pure and simple joy of existence is beating in his little heart. The things which lie behind the hills will never sadden him. His kingdom is here, and he is content." Borrowdean's smile was a little cynical.
"I shall take this telegram to Lord Redford. I shall tell him everything!" A faint smile flickered upon Borrowdean's lips. "Lord Redford would, I am sure, be charmed to hear your story," he remarked. "Unfortunately he started for Dieppe this morning before eight o'clock, and will not be back until to-morrow." "And to-morrow will be too late," she added, rapidly pursuing his train of thought.
For a moment that somewhat cynical restraint which seemed to divest of enthusiasm Borrowdean's most earnest words, and which militated somewhat against his reputation as a public speaker, seemed to have fallen from him. Mannering, recognizing it, answered him gravely enough, though with no less decision. "If you are right, Borrowdean," he said, "the suffering will be mine.
"So Nature has her little caprices, even in paradise!" he remarked. "It will blow over in an hour," Mannering said. "A breath of wind, and the whole thing is gone." Borrowdean's farewells were of the briefest. He made no further allusion to the object of his visit. He departed as one who had been paying an afternoon call more or less agreeable.
The Duchess looked from one to the other. She almost permitted herself to be astonished. Borrowdean's face was dark with anger. Blanche Mannering's apparent calmness was obviously of the surface only. "Are you serious?" she asked. "Miserably so!" Blanche answered. "Sir Leslie has strange ideas of honour, I find.
In those days at Blakely she had almost idealized him. The simple purity of his life there, his delicate and carefully chosen pleasures, combined with his almost passionate love of the open places of the earth, had led her to regard him as something different from any other man whom she had ever known. All Borrowdean's hints and open statements had gone for very little.
Borrowdean's eyebrows were raised. He held his cigarette between his fingers, and looked at it for several moments. "Yet I am here," he said slowly, "for no other purpose." Mannering turned and faced his friend. "All I can say is that I am sorry to hear it," he declared.
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