Mannering muttered some evasive reply. He, too, had marked the note of battle in Blanche's tone. He had noticed, too, the unusual restraint of her manner. She had drunk little or no wine at dinner time, and she had talked quietly and sensibly. Directly they reached the courtyard she seated herself on a settee for two, and made room for him by her side.
"Come and tell me about the golf match," she said. "Who won?"
Mannering had no alternative but to obey. Lady Redford, however, drew her chair up close to theirs, and the conversation was always general. Berenice in a few minutes rose to her feet.
"Listen to the sea," she exclaimed. "Don't some of you want to come down to the rocks and watch it?"
Blanche rose up at once.
"Do come, Lawrence, if you are not too tired!" she said.
The whole party trooped out on to the promenade. Blanche passed her arm through her husband's, and calmly appropriated him.
"You can walk with whom you please presently, Lawrence," she said, "but I want you for a few minutes. I suppose you will admit that I have some claim?"
"Certainly," Mannering answered. "I have never denied it."
"I am your wife," Blanche said, "though heaven knows why you ever married me. The Duchess is, I suppose, the woman whom you would have married if you hadn't got into a mess with your politics. She is a very attractive woman, and you married me, of course, out of pity, or some such maudlin reason. But all the same I am here, and—I don't care what you do when I can't see you, but I won't have her make love to you before my face."