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Updated: May 27, 2025
He handed a sheet of paper to Borrowdean, who glanced it eagerly down. Afterwards he looked up and met Mannering's calm gaze. There was an absolute silence for several seconds. "My name," Borrowdean said, hoarsely, "is not amongst these!" "It really never occurred to me for a single second to place it there," Mannering answered. Borrowdean drew a little breath. He was deathly pale.
She had addressed Mannering, but her eyes seemed suddenly drawn to Borrowdean. As though dazzled by the sun, she dropped her veil. Borrowdean was standing as though turned to stone, perfectly rigid and motionless. His face was like a still, white mask. "I am so sorry," Mannering said, "but I have had a most unexpected visit from an old friend. May I introduce Sir Leslie Borrowdean Mrs. Handsell!"
She called for me here, and took me down last Friday." "Are these people who are generally accounted respectable?" Mannering asked. "I don't think that Bristow is much better or worse than half of our country houses," Borrowdean answered. "People who are at all in the swim must have excitement nowadays, you know. Bristow himself isn't very popular, but people go to the house."
"Lord Redford is very fond of concealing his plans to the last moment, but he is a very clever man. And Sir Leslie Borrowdean would give his little finger to catch you tripping. All this avoidance of politics is part of a scheme. They will spring something upon you quite suddenly. Don't give any hasty pledges." "Thank you for your warning," he said. "I will be careful."
Mannering glanced at it and frowned. "The gentleman said that he would not keep you for more than a moment, sir," the servant announced quietly, mindful of the half-sovereign which had been slipped into his hand. Mannering still looked at the card doubtfully. "You can show him up," he said at last. "Very good, sir!" The man withdrew, and reappeared to usher in Sir Leslie Borrowdean.
"Behold," he exclaimed, "the invasion of modernity. Even your time-forgotten paradise, Mannering, has its civilizations, then. What an anachronism!" With a cloud of dust behind, and with the sun flashing upon its polished metal parts, a motor car swung into sight, and came rushing towards them. Borrowdean, always a keen observer of trifles, noticed the change in Mannering's face.
"I understand you so far as this," she answered. "You are one of those to whom life is a chessboard, and your one aim is to make the pieces work for you, and at your bidding, till you sit in the place you covet. There isn't much of the patriot about you, Sir Leslie Borrowdean." He glanced down at his unfinished breakfast. He had the air of one who is a little bored.
Borrowdean shrugged his shoulders, with a little gesture of impatience. He had left London at a moment when he could ill be spared, and had not travelled to this out-of-the-way corner of the kingdom to exchange purposeless platitudes with a man whose present attitude towards life at any rate he heartily despised. He seated himself upon a half-broken rail, and lit a cigarette.
He has gone into the land of ghosts or are we the ghosts, I wonder, who loiter here?" Mannering answered her without a touch of levity. He, too, was unusually serious. "We have the better part," he said. "Yet Borrowdean is one of those men who know very well how to play upon the heartstrings. A human being is like a musical instrument to him.
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.
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