Lord Redford sighed. Why were men born, he wondered, with such a prodigious capacity for playing the fool?
"My chief regret, Mannering," he said, "is for you. The Fates so controlled circumstances that you seemed certain to achieve as a young man what is the crowning triumph of us veterans in the political world. I respect the honest scruples of every man, but it seems to me that you are throwing away an unparalleled opportunity in a fit of what a practical man like myself can only call sentimentality. I have no more to say. Forgive me if I have said too much. For the rest, give us the pleasure of your company here for as long as you find it convenient. We will abjure politics, and you shall give me my revenge at golf."
"I am very much obliged to you," he said, "but there is only one course open to me. I must go back and make my plans. If I could have a carriage for the nine-forty!"
Lord Redford made no effort to induce him to change his mind, though he remained courteous to the last.
"I was really glad to have him go," he told Borrowdean afterwards. "His very presence--the thought that there could be such colossal fools in the world--irritated me beyond measure. You can write his epitaph, Leslie, if your humorous vein is working, for the man is politically dead."
"One never knows," Berenice said, quietly. "There must be something great about a man capable of such prodigious self-sacrifice. For at heart Lawrence Mannering is an ambitious man."
"Perhaps," he said, "but I am very sure of this. There is nothing so great about the man as his folly."
"We shall see," she said. "Personally, I believe that Sir Leslie would find his epitaph a little previous. I saw a great deal of Lawrence Mannering in the country, and I think that I understand him as well as either of you. I believe that his day will come."
"Well, all I can say is," Lord Redford pronounced, "that I very much wish you had left him down at his country home. Between you you have created a very serious situation. I must go up to town to-morrow and see Manningham. In the meantime, Leslie, I shall leave those reports severely alone. We must ignore Mannering altogether."
Berenice turned away with a smile at her lips. She had a very little opinion of Lord Redford and his following. Already she saw the man whose career they counted finished, at the head of a new and greater party. There were plenty of clever men of the coming generation, plenty of room for compromises, for the formation of a great national party out of the scattered units of a disunited opposition. She believed Mannering strong enough to do this. She saw in it greater possibilities than might have been forthcoming even if he had been chosen to lead the somewhat ragged party represented by Lord Redford and his followers. For the rest, she had been very near the success she so desired. Only an accident had robbed her of victory. If once they had reached the rose-garden she knew that she would have triumphed.