Mary considered.
"I think you will have to change your tactics."
"Dictate them, then."
He bent forward, with that sudden change of manner, that courteous sweetness of tone and gesture, which few women could resist. Mary's heart, seasoned though it were, felt a charming flutter. She talked, and she talked well. She had no independence of mind, and very little real knowledge; but she had an excellent reporter's ability; she knew what to remember, and how to tell it. Cliffe listened to her attentively, acknowledging to himself the while that she had certainly gained. She was a far more definite personality than she had been when he last knew her; and her self-possession, her trained manner, rested him. Thank Heaven, she was not a clever woman—how he detested the breed! But she was a useful one. And the smiling commonplace into which she fell so often was positively welcome to him. He had known what it was to court a woman who was more than his equal both in mind and passion; and it had left him bitter and broken.
"Well, all this is most illuminating," he said at last. "I owe you immense thanks." And he put out a pair of hands, thin, brown, and weather-stained as his face, and pressed one of hers. "We're very old friends, aren't we?"
"Are we?" said Mary, drawing back.
"So far as any one can be the friend of a chap like me," he said, hastily. "Tell me, are you with Lady Tranmore?"
"No. I go to her in a few days—till I leave London."
"Don't go away," he said, suddenly and insistently. "Don't go away."
Mary could not help a slight wavering in the eyes that perforce met his. Then he said, abruptly, as she rose: