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Updated: May 27, 2025
Mannering is best left alone now, for the present. You understand me?" Borrowdean shrugged his shoulders. There was a good deal too much sentiment in politics. Mannering and Berenice came together for a few moments on the terrace after dinner.
The two men stood side by side upon the grassy bank, Mannering broad-shouldered and vigorous, his clean, hard-cut features tanned with wind and sun, his eyes bright and vigorous with health; Leslie Borrowdean, once his greatest friend, a man of almost similar physique, but with the bent frame and listless pallor of a dweller in the crowded places of life.
Such work as I can do from my study is, as it always has been, at your service. But I myself have finished with actual political life. Don't press me too hard. I must seem churlish and ungrateful, but if I listened to you for hours the result would be the same. I have finished with actual political life." Borrowdean shrugged his shoulders despairingly. Such a man was hard to deal with.
Berenice found the following morning a note from Borrowdean, which caused her some perplexity. "If you really care," he said, "to do Mannering a good turn, look his niece up now and then. I am afraid that young woman has rather lost her head since she came to London, and she is making friends who will do her no particular good."
For some few moments he did not speak at all. Already he fancied that he could see the whole pitiful little incident Borrowdean, diplomatic, genial, persistent, the woman a fool, fashioned to his own making; himself the sacrifice. Yet the meaning of it all was dark to him. She moved over to his side. Her eyes and tone were full of appeal.
Such men as Lawrence Mannering belong to a race of human beings of whom you know nothing. I listened to you once, and I was a fool. You could as soon teach me to believe that you were a saint, as that Mannering had anything in his past or present life of which he was ashamed. Now, Hortense." Borrowdean walked off, still smiling. How simple half the world was.
Borrowdean looked at her thoughtfully. He had the air of a man a trifle piqued. Perhaps for the first time he realized that Blanche Phillimore was not altogether an unattractive-looking woman. If she had desired to stir him from his indifference she could not have chosen any more effectual means. "I am not going to argue with you," he said, quietly.
"I was," Borrowdean admitted. "It does not exist any longer," Berenice said, "I should be glad if you would inform any one who has heard the rumour that it is without any foundation." Borrowdean looked thoughtfully at the woman by his side. "I am very glad to hear it," he declared. "I am glad for many reasons, and I am glad personally." She raised her eyebrows. "Indeed!
We need you!" A shadow had fallen upon Mannering's face. Borrowdean was in earnest, and his appeal was scarcely one to be treated lightly. Nevertheless, Mannering showed no sign of faltering, though his tone was certainly graver. "Leslie," he said, "you speak like a prophet, but believe me, my mind is made up. I have taken root here.
Grant for a moment all that you have told Borrowdean and myself about the condition of the labour classes in the great towns and the universal depression of trade. How can you possibly imagine that the imposition of tariff duties is the sovereign, or even a possible, remedy? Why, you yourself have been one of the most brilliant pamphleteers against anything of the sort.
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