ft--that it
was a morning's ride--but motors were so uncertain that she took a bag."

Mannering's eyes were filled once more with tears. The intolerable pity
of the whole thing, its awful suddenness swept every other thought out of
his mind. He remembered how anxiously she had tried to please him on that
last night. He loathed himself for the cold brutality of his chilly
affection. Hester came and knelt by his side, but she said nothing. So
the hours passed.

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

THE PERSISTENCY OF BORROWDEAN

"And what does Mannering think of it all, I wonder!" Lord Redford
remarked, lighting a fresh cigarette. "This may be his opportunity, who
can tell!"

"Will he have the nerve to grasp it?" Borrowdean asked. "Mannering has
never been proved in a crisis."

"He may have the nerve. I should be more inclined to question the
desire," Lord Redford said. "For a man in his position he has always
seemed to me singularly unambitious. I don't think that the prospect of
being Prime Minister would dazzle him in the least. It is part of the
genius of the politician too, to know exactly when and how to seize an
opportunity. I can imagine him watching it come, examining it through his
eyeglass, and standing on one side with a shrug of the shoulders."

"You do not believe, then," Berenice said, "that he is sufficiently in
earnest to grasp it?"

"Exactly," Lord Redford said. "I have that feeling about Mannering, I
must admit, especially during the last two years. He seems to have drawn
away from all of us, to live altogether too absorbed and self-contained
a life for a man who has great ambitions to realize, or who is in
downright earnest about his work."

"What you all forget when you discuss Lawrence Mannering is this,"
Berenice said. "He holds his position almost as a sacred charge. He is
absolutely conscientious. He wants certain things for the sake of the
people, and he will work steadily on until he gets them. I believe it is
the truth that he has no personal ambition, but if the cause he has at
heart is to be furthered at all it must be by his taking office.
Therefore I think that when the time comes he will take it."

"That sounds reasonable enough," Lord Redford admitted. "By the bye, did
you notice that he is included in the house party at Sandringham again
this week?"

Anstruther, the youngest Cabinet Minister, and Lord Redford's nephew,
joined in the conversation.

"I can tell you something