ou care for me better than
anything else in the world."

He caught her hands. There was a rare passion vibrating in his tone.

"You do not doubt it, Berenice?"

"Perhaps not," she answered, "but I want to be told. I am a middle-aged
woman, you know, Lawrence, but I want to be made love to as though I were
a silly girl! Isn't that foolish? But you must do it," she whispered,
with her lips very close to his.

He drew her into his arms.

"I am not at all sure," he said, "that I have enough courage to make love
to a Duchess!"

"Then you can remember only that I am a woman," she whispered, "very,
very, very much a woman, and--I'm afraid--a woman shockingly in love!"

She disengaged herself suddenly, and was at the door before he could
reach it. She looked back. Her cheeks were flushed. There was even a
faint tinge of pink underneath the creamy white of her slender, stately
neck.

"Don't dare," she said, "to be more than five minutes!"

Mannering poured himself out a glass of wine, and sat quite still with
his head between his hands. He wanted to realize this thing if he could.
The grinding of the great wheels fell no more upon his ears. He looked
into a new world, so different from the old that he was almost afraid.

And in her room, Berenice waited for him impatiently.

CHAPTER VII

A BLOW FOR BORROWDEAN

There was a somewhat unusual alertness in Borrowdean's manner as he
passed out from the little house in Sloane Gardens and summoned a passing
hansom. He drove to the corner of Hyde Park, and dismissing the cab
strolled along the broad walk.

The many acquaintances whom he passed and repassed he greeted with a
certain amount of abstraction. All the time he kept his eyes upon the
road. He was waiting to catch sight of some familiar liveries. When at
last they came he contrived to stop the carriage and hastily threaded his
way to the side of the barouche.

Berenice was looking radiantly beautiful. The exquisite simplicity of her
white muslin gown and large hat of black feathers, the slight flush with
which she received him, as though she carried about with her a secret
which she expected every one to read, the extinction of that air of
listlessness which had robbed her for some time of a certain share of her
good looks--of all these things Borrowdean made quick note. His face grew
graver as he accepted her not very enthusiastic invitation and occupied
the back seat of the carriage. For the first tim