A Lost Leader | Page 4

or Meredith, and this west wind
blowing in my face, than I would hear myself acclaimed Prime
Minister of England. Let us abandon this discussion once and for all,
Borrowdean. We have arrived at a cul-de-sac, and I have spoken my
last word."
Borrowdean threw his half-finished cigarette into the ever-widening
creek below. It was characteristic of the man that his face showed no
sign of disappointment. Only for several moments he kept silence.
"Come," Mannering said at last. "Let us make our way back to the
house. If you are resolved to get back to town to-night, we ought to be
thinking about luncheon."
"Thank you," Borrowdean said. "I must return."
They started to walk inland, but they had taken only a few steps when
they both, as though by a common impulse, stopped. An unfamiliar
sound had broken in upon the deep silence of this quiet land.
Borrowdean, who was a few paces ahead, pointed to the bend in the
road below, and turned towards his companion with a little gesture of
cynical amusement.
"Behold," he exclaimed, "the invasion of modernity. Even your
time-forgotten paradise, Mannering, has its civilizations, then. What an
anachronism!"
With a cloud of dust behind, and with the sun flashing upon its polished
metal parts, a motor car swung into sight, and came rushing towards
them. Borrowdean, always a keen observer of trifles, noticed the
change in Mannering's face.
"It is a neighbour of mine," he remarked. "She is on her way to the golf
links."
"Golf links!" Borrowdean exclaimed.
Mannering nodded.

"Behind the sandhills there," he remarked.
There was a grinding of brakes. The car came to a standstill below. A
woman, who sat alone in the back seat, raised her veil and looked
upwards.
"Am I late?" she asked. "Clara has gone on--they told me!"
She had addressed Mannering, but her eyes seemed suddenly drawn to
Borrowdean. As though dazzled by the sun, she dropped her veil.
Borrowdean was standing as though turned to stone, perfectly rigid and
motionless. His face was like a still, white mask.
"I am so sorry," Mannering said, "but I have had a most unexpected
visit from an old friend. May I introduce Sir Leslie Borrowdean--Mrs.
Handsell!"
The lady in the car bent her head, and Borrowdean performed an
automatic salute. Mannering continued:
"I am afraid that I must throw myself upon your mercy! Sir Leslie
insists upon returning this afternoon, and I am taking him back for an
early luncheon. You will find Clara and Lindsay at the golf club. May
we have our foursome to-morrow?"
"Certainly! I will not keep you for a moment. I must hurry now, or the
tide will be over the road."
She motioned the driver to proceed, but Borrowdean interposed.
"Mannering," he said, "I am afraid that the poison of your lotos land is
beginning to work already. May I stay until to-morrow and walk round
with you whilst you play your foursome? I should enjoy it immensely."
Mannering looked at his friend for a moment in amazement. Then he
laughed heartily.
"By all means!" he answered. "Our foursome stands, then, Mrs.
Handsell. This way, Borrowdean!"

The two men turned once more seaward, walking in single file along
the top of the grassy bank. The woman in the car inclined her head, and
motioned the driver to proceed.
CHAPTER II
THE WOMAN WITH AN ALIAS
Borrowdean seemed after all to take but little interest in the game. He
walked generally, some distance away from the players, on the top of
the low bank of sandhills which fringed the sea. He was one of those
men whom solitude never wearies, a weaver of carefully thought-out
schemes, no single detail of which was ever left to chance or impulse.
Such moments as these were valuable to him. He bared his head to the
breeze, stopped to listen to the larks, watched the sea-gulls float low
over the lapping waters, without paying the slightest attention to any
one of them. The instinctive cunning which never deserted him led him
without any conscious effort to assume a pleasure in these things which,
as a matter of fact, he found entirely meaningless. It led him, too, to
choose a retired spot for those periods of intensely close observation to
which he every now and then subjected his host and the woman who
was now his partner in the game. What he saw entirely satisfied him.
Yet the way was scarcely clear.
They caught him up near one of the greens, and he stood with his hands
behind him, and his eyeglass securely fixed, gravely watching them
approach and put for the hole. To him the whole performance seemed
absolutely idiotic, but he showed no sign of anything save a mild and
genial interest. Clara, Mannering's niece, who