A Lost Leader | Page 6

ball was found. A little later on the round was finished. Clara attributed her success to the excellence of her caddie. Mrs. Handsell deplored a headache, which had put her off her putting. Lindsay, who was in a bad temper, declined an invitation to lunch, and rode off on his bicycle. The rest of the little party gathered round the motor car, and Borrowdean asked preposterous questions about the gears and the speeds.
"If you are really interested," Mrs. Handsell said, languidly, "I will take you home. I have only room for one, unfortunately, with all these clubs and things."
"I should be delighted," Borrowdean answered, "but perhaps Miss Mannering--"
"Clara will look after me," Mannering interrupted, smiling. "Try to make an enthusiast of him, Mrs. Handsell. He needs a hobby badly."
They started off. She leaned back in her seat and pulled her veil down.
"Do not talk to me here," she said. "We shall have a quarter of an hour before they can arrive."
Borrowdean assented silently. He was glad of the respite, for he wanted to think. A few minutes' swift rush through the air, and the car pulled up before a queer, old-fashioned dwelling house in the middle of the village. A smart maid-servant came hurrying out to assist her mistress. Borrowdean was ushered into a long, low drawing-room, with open windows leading out on to a trim lawn. Beyond was a walled garden bordering the churchyard.
Mrs. Handsell came back almost immediately. Borrowdean, turning his head as she entered, found himself studying her with a new curiosity. Yes, she was a beautiful woman. She had lost nothing. Her complexion--a little tanned, perhaps--was as fresh and soft as a girl's, her smile as delightfully full of humour as ever. Not a speck of grey in her black hair, not a shadow of embarrassment. A wonderful woman!
"The one thing which we have no time to do is to stand and look at one another," she declared. "However, since you have tried to stare me out of countenance, what do you find?"
"I find you unchanged," he answered, gravely.
"Naturally! I have found a panacea for all the woes of life. Now what do you want down here?"
"Mannering!"
"Of course. But you won't get him. He declares that he has finished with politics, and I never knew a man so thoroughly in earnest."
Borrowdean smiled.
"No man has ever finished with politics!"
"A platitude," she declared. "As for Mannering, well, for the first few weeks I felt about him as I suppose you do now. I know him better now, and I have changed my mind. He is unique, absolutely unique! Do you think that I could have existed here for nearly two months without him?"
"May I inquire," Borrowdean asked, blandly, "how much longer you intend to exist here with him?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"All my days--perhaps! He and this place together are an anchorage. Look at me! Am I not a different woman? I know you too well, my dear Leslie, to attempt your conversion, but I can assure you that I am--very nearly in earnest!"
"You interest me amazingly," he remarked, smiling. "May I ask, does Mannering know you as Mrs. Handsell only?"
"Of course!"
"This," he continued, "is not the Garden of Eden. I may be the first, but others will come who will surely recognize you."
"I must risk it," she answered.
Borrowdean swung his eyeglass backwards and forwards. All the time he was thinking intensely.
"How long have you been here?" he asked.
"Very nearly two months," she answered. "Imagine it!"
"Quite long enough for your little idyll," he said. "Come, you know what the end of it must be. We need Mannering! Help us!"
"Not I," she answered, coolly. "You must do without him for the present."
"You are our natural ally," he protested. "We need your help now. You know very well that with a slip of the tongue I could change the whole situation."
"Somehow," she said, "I do not think that you are likely to make that slip."
"Why not?" he protested. "I begin to understand Mannering's firmness now. You are one of the ropes which hold him to this petty life--to this philandering amongst the flower-pots. You are one of the ropes I want to cut. Why not, indeed? I think that I could do it."
"Do you want a bribe?"
"I want Mannering."
"So do I!"
"He can belong to you none the less for belonging to us politically."
"Possibly! But I prefer him here. As a recluse he is adorable. I do not want him to go through the mill."
"You don't understand his importance to us," Borrowdean declared. "This is really no light affair. Rochester and Mellors both believe in him. There is no limit to what he might not ask."
"He has told me a dozen times," she said, "that he never means to sit in Parliament again."
"There is no reason why he should not change his