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Updated: May 19, 2025
Berenice and the Duchess of Lenchester are two very different persons. I cannot take one into my life without the other. It is because I love her, Hester, that I let her go. Good-night, child!" She kissed his hand and went slowly to her room, stumbling upstairs through a mist of tears. There was nothing more that she could do.
"I have ambitions, it is true, and the world is not exactly a playground for me. Nevertheless, I am not an ascetic like Mannering. The world, the flesh and the devil are very much to me what they are to other men. But in a sense you have cornered me, and you shall have the truth. I want to marry the Duchess of Lenchester myself." She nodded. "That's right," she said. "Now we know where we are.
"You won't trust me?" She looked at him. "There isn't much honour about an arrangement of this sort, is there?" she said. "It has to be on paper, or not at all." A carriage stopped outside. They heard the bell. "That," she remarked, "may be the Duchess of Lenchester." He caught up the pen and wrote a few hurried lines. The smile with which he handed it to her was not altogether successful.
"If we were not acquaintances of long standing, Sir Leslie," she said, calmly, "I should consider your remarks impertinent. As it is, I choose to look upon them as a regrettable mistake. The person, whoever she may be, whom the Duchess of Lenchester chooses to receive is usually acceptable to her friends. I beg that you will not refer to the subject again." Sir Leslie bowed.
You will say to yourself: 'She was that sort of woman, she had that sort of disposition, she was bound to go to the dogs, anyway! So you are going to marry the Duchess of Lenchester, Lawrence!" He stood up. "Blanche," he said, "that was all a mistake. I didn't understand. Let us forget that day altogether. Marry me now, and I will try to make up for these past years." She stared at him blankly.
"So you see we are found out, after all, Duchess," he said, turning to her. "You have known Mrs. Handsell, Mannering, let me present you now to her other self. Duchess, you see that our recluse has come to his senses at last. I must really introduce you formally: Mr. Mannering the Duchess of Lenchester." Berenice, arrested in her forward movement, watched Mannering's face eagerly.
I owed you a comfortable place in life, and I have tried to see that you have it. I have never refused anything you have asked me, I have never mentioned the sacrifices which I have been forced to make. But there is a limit. I draw it here. I will not suffer any interference between the Duchess of Lenchester and myself!" Blanche Phillimore rose slowly to her feet.
I'm not so very old, but I look fifty, and I've vices enough to blacken an entire neighbourhood. Fancy, if people saw me, and heard that you might have married the Duchess of Lenchester. They'd hint at an asylum." "Never mind about other people," he said. "Give me a chance, Blanche, to show that I'm not such an absolute brute." "Rubbish," she interrupted.
"Sir Leslie divined my wishes," she answered. "He knew that it was my wish to spend several months away from everybody, and, if possible, unrecognized. Perhaps I had better make my confession at once. My name is not Mrs. Handsell. I am the Duchess of Lenchester." Mannering stood as though turned to stone. The woman watched him eagerly. She waited for him to speak in vain.
"Won't you be a little more explicit?" he begged. "They say that you are going to marry the Duchess of Lenchester!" "It is true," he answered. She leaned forward. Her clasped hands rested upon her knee. She seemed to be examining the tip of her patent shoe. Suddenly she looked up at him. "You ought to have come and told me yourself!" she said. "I had no opportunity," he reminded her.
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