ng-room, crowded with rococo furniture and many
knick-knacks, where he waited more or less impatiently for nearly twenty
minutes. Then Mrs. Phillimore swept into the room, elaborately gowned for
her drive in the park, dispersing perfumes in all directions and
bestowing a dazzling smile upon him.

"I felt very much inclined not to see you at all," she declared. "How
dared you keep away from me all this time? You haven't been near me since
I moved in here. What do you think of my little house?"

"Charming!" he declared.

"Every one likes it," she remarked. "Such a time I had choosing the
furniture. Hester wouldn't help with a single thing. You know that she
has left me?"

"I understood that she had gone to Mr. Mannering as secretary," he
answered. "She has done typing for him for some time, hasn't she?"

Mrs. Phillimore nodded.

"Worships him, the little fool!" she remarked. "I must admit I detest
clever men. You are all so dull, and such scheming brutes, too."

Borrowdean smiled. A certain rough-and-ready humour about this woman
always appealed to him. He looked around.

"You seem to have done very nicely with that little offering," he said.

"Oh, ready money goes a long way," she declared, carelessly.

"And when it is spent?" he asked. "Five thousand pounds is not an
inexhaustible sum."

"By the time it is spent," she answered, "your party will be in, and I
suppose you will make Lawrence something."

Borrowdean regarded the woman thoughtfully.

"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, "that the time is likely to come
when Mannering might want his money for himself? He might want to marry,
for instance."

She laughed mirthlessly, but without a shade of uneasiness.

"You don't know Lawrence," she declared, scornfully. "He'd never do that
whilst I was alive."

"I am not so sure," Borrowdean answered, calmly. "Between ourselves,
I cannot see that your claim upon him amounts to very much."

"Then you're a fool!" she declared, brusquely.

"No, I'm not," Borrowdean assured her, blandly. "Now I fancy that I could
tell you something which would surprise you very much."

"Has he been making love to any one?" she asked, quickly.

"Something of the sort," he admitted. "Mannering is quixotic, of course,
and that hermit life of his down in Norfolk has made him more so. Now he
has come back again into the world it is just possible that he may see
things differently. I flatter myself that I am a man of common se