"Yes," she murmured, "I understand. Don't let them ever bring you away."
Once again Mannering found himself in the over-scented, overheated room, which was perhaps of all places in the world the one he hated the most. Fresh from the wind-swept places of his country home, he found the atmosphere intolerable. After a few minutes' waiting he threw open the windows and leaned out. Hester was walking in the Square somewhere. He had a shrewd idea that she had been sent out of the way. With a restless impatience of her absence he awaited the interview which he dreaded.
Her mother's coming took him a little by surprise. She seemed to have laid aside all her usual customs. She entered the room quietly. She greeted him almost nervously. She was dressed, without at any rate any obvious attempt to attract, in a plain black gown, and with none of the extravagances in which she sometimes delighted. Her usual boisterous confidence of manner seemed to have deserted her. Her face, without its skilful touches of rouge, looked thin, and almost peaked.
"I am so glad that you came, Lawrence," she said. "It was very good of you."
She glanced towards the opened windows, and he closed them at once.
"I am afraid," he said, "that you have not been well!"
There was a touch of her old self in the hardness of her low laugh.
"It is remorse!" she declared. "I think that for once in my life I have permitted myself to think! It is a great mistake. One loses confidence when one realizes what a beast one is."
He waited in silence. It seemed to him the best thing. She sat down a little wearily. He remained standing a few feet away.
"I have given you away, Lawrence," she said, quietly.
"Hester has told you, of course. I am not blaming her. She did quite right. Only I should have told you myself. I wanted to be the first to assure you of this. Our secret is quite safe. The man--with whom I made a fool of myself--has given me his word of honour."
"Sir Leslie Borrowdean's--word of honour!" Mannering remarked, with slow scorn. "Do you know the man, I wonder?"
"I know that he wishes to be your friend, and not your enemy," she said.
"He chooses his friends for what they are worth to him," Mannering answered. "It is all a matter of self-interest. He has some idea of making me the stepping-stone to his advancement. I have a place just now in his scheme of life. But as for friendship! Borrowdean does not know the meaning of the word."