"I find amusement often in watching my neighbours," Blanche said. "I like to ask myself what it is they want, and to study their way of attaining it. You generally find that every one is fairly transparent when once you have found the key--and everybody is trying for something which they don't care for other people to know about."
The Duchess looked at Blanche steadily. There was a certain insolence, the insolence of her aristocratic birth and assured position in the level stare of her clear brown eyes. But Blanche did not flinch.
"I had no idea, Mrs. Mannering, that you had tastes of that sort," Berenice said, languidly. "Suppose you give us a few examples."
"Not for the world," Blanche answered, fervently. "Did you say that we were to have coffee outside, Lord Redford? How delightful! I wonder if Lady Redford is ready."
They all trooped out in a minute or two. Berenice laid her hand upon Mannering's arm.
"Your wife," she said, quietly, "is going a little too far. She is getting positively rude to me!"
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?"
"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."
