"Is there anything which you could tell me about her?"
"No!"
"Yet at her bidding you have done—what you refused me."
"I had no choice! Borrowdean saw to that," he remarked, bitterly.
She rose to her feet. She was pale, and her lips were quivering, but she was splendidly handsome.
"What sort of a man are you, Lawrence Mannering?" she asked, steadily. "You play at idealism, you asked me to marry you. Yet all the time there was this background."
"It was madness," he admitted. "But remember it was Mrs. Handsell whom I asked to be my wife."
"What difference does that make? She was a woman, too, I suppose, to be honoured—or insulted—by your choice!"
"There was no question of insult, I think."
She looked at him steadfastly. Perhaps for a moment her thoughts travelled back to those unforgotten days in the rose-gardens at Blakely, to the man whose delicate but wholesome joy in the wind and the sun and the flowers, the sea-stained marshes and the windy knolls where they had so often stood together, she could not forget. His life had seemed to her then so beautiful a thing. The elementary purity of his thoughts and aspirations were unmistakable. She told herself passionately that there must be a way out.