He could not understand the attack itself.

He failed altogether to appreciate its tenour.
"Forgive me," he protested, "but I did not know that you had any plans.
All that you told us on your return from Blakely was that you had failed.
So far as you were concerned the matter seemed to me to be over, and with it, I imagined, your interest in Mannering.

I brought him here--" "Well ?" "Because I wished him to know who you were.

I wished him to understand the improbability of your ever again returning to Blakely." "You are telling the truth now, at any rate," she remarked, curtly, "or what sounds like the truth.

Why did you trouble in the matter at all?
Where I have failed you are not likely to succeed." Borrowdean smiled for the first time.
"I have still some hopes of doing so," he admitted.
The Duchess glanced at the little Louis Seize time-piece, and hesitated.
"You had better abandon them," she said.