d.i.c.k had never seen his cousin so animated, so interested, in a word, so amused, for years. He was rather surprised.

"It'll be an awful bore," he said slowly, "and Richard--are you sure that you wish it? I think I could manage to put off most of these people--I mean without giving offence."

"No, no, d.i.c.k! I know it'll give you a certain amount of trouble"--the older man looked attentively at the younger--"but I've felt lately that we didn't see enough people. I don't see why my state and Athena's selfishness"--he uttered the word very deliberately--"should force you to live such an unnatural life as you've now been leading for so long----" He waited a moment and then said, more lightly, "I'm afraid that we both, you and I, have grown to believe that Jane Oglander's the only young woman in the world."

Wantele gave him a swift look.

"She's the only woman in the world for me," he muttered. "Lingard may be a good fellow, Richard, but I wish--I would give a good deal to know what Jane sees in him." He also was trying to speak lightly.

"Ah, one always feels that!" Richard Maule lay back in his chair. The short discussion had tired him. "Then will you see about it all, d.i.c.k?"

"Yes," cried Wantele hastily, "of course I will! I agree that we've been too much shut up."

He went back to Athena, and this time she welcomed him graciously. She also had received letters asking for a peep of their hero.

Wantele looked at his cousin's wife with reluctant admiration. He had not seen her looking as animated, as radiant as--as seductive as she looked now for a very long time.

"Don't you see the change in Richard?" she asked eagerly. "He's become quite another creature since General Lingard came here. I've always thought you kept Richard far too much shut up, d.i.c.k----"

"You never said so before," he said sharply.

She shrugged her shoulders. "It was none of my business."

Her face clouded, and with hasty accord they changed the subject, and with exactly the same words: "Who had we better ask first?" And then they stopped, and laughed. For the moment these two, Richard Maule's heir and Richard Maule's wife, were on more cordial terms than they had been for years.

"You have now got all the letters," she cried gaily--"Richard's, mine, and yours! Look them over, and make out a list--I'm sure you're much better at that sort of thing than I am!"

He left her to carry out her behest.

If there was anything like real entertaining to be done at Rede Place, all kinds of arrangements would have to be made, and the making of them must fall on d.i.c.k Wantele. Athena had told the truth when she had described herself to General Lingard as only a guest in her husband's house. But she had omitted to add that it was an arrangement which had hitherto suited her perfectly, and the only one she would have tolerated.

CHAPTER VIII

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

During the days that followed d.i.c.k Wantele's return home, it seemed to him as though a magic wand had been waved over Rede Place.

Mrs. Maule had no wish to keep her famous guest to herself. Even to the two men who watched her with a rather cruel scrutiny so much was clear.

She seemed, indeed, to delight in exhibiting General Lingard to the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood were only too willing to fall in with her pleasure.

The gatherings were small, when one came to think of it--eight or ten people to lunch, ten or twelve people to dinner.

How accustomed d.i.c.k grew to the formula which had at first so much surprised him! "Dear Mrs. Maule," or "Dear Mr. Wantele" (as the case might be) "We hear that General Lingard is staying at Rede Place. It would give us very great pleasure if you would bring him over to lunch or dinner, whichever suits you best."

But there Athena wisely drew the line. No, she would not take General Lingard, or allow him to be taken, here and there and everywhere! He was at Rede Place for rest. But the agreeable people, the people who would amuse and interest him, and the people who if dull had, as it were, a right to meet the lion, were asked in their turn to come.

They would arrive about half-past one, filling the beautiful rooms generally so empty of human sounds, with a pleasant bustle of talk and laughter. They would lunch in the tapestry dining-room, none too young or too old to enjoy the far-famed skill of Richard Maule's Corsican chef; and then, according to their fancy, or according to Athena's whim, they would wander about the house, looking at the pictures and fingering the curios which enjoyed an almost legendary reputation; or better still stream out into the formal gardens, now brilliant with strangely tinted autumn flowers, and fantastically peopled with the marble fauns and stone dryads brought from Italy and Greece by old Theophilus Joy.

Finally they would go away, thanking Athena earnestly for the delightful time they had had and telling themselves and each other that Mrs. Maule was, after all, a very charming person, and that the stories of her heartless conduct to her husband, of her long absences from home, of her--well--her flirtations, were probably all quite untrue!

The dinner-parties were slightly more formal affairs, but they also, thanks to all those concerned--and especially to Mrs. Maule--were quite successful, and very pleasant.

For the first time for many years, Athena Maule and d.i.c.k Wantele were thrown into a curious kind of intimacy. They had constantly to consult each other, and to confer together. "You see, I want to get all this sort of thing over before Jane arrives!" she once exclaimed; and Wantele had looked at her musingly. After all, perhaps she spoke the truth.

Strange ten days! No wonder that d.i.c.k Wantele was surprised, almost bewildered, by Athena in her new role--by Athena, that is, in the part of good-humoured, graceful, tactful hostess of Rede Place. Hitherto his imagination had never followed his cousin's wife on the long visits she paid to other people's houses. Now, with astonishment he realised that she must be, even apart from her singular beauty, and what had become to him her perverse, and most dangerous charm, an agreeable guest.

She thought of everything, she thought of everybody, even of Mabel Digby. Mabel Digby was allowed to have her full share in the festivities, in the glorifications--for they were nothing else--of General Lingard, and that although Athena had never liked Mabel, and thought her a tiresome, priggish girl. Yes, all that fell to Mrs.

Maule's share was managed with infinite tact, good humour, and good taste. The guests were not allowed to bother Richard, or to interfere with Richard's comfort and love of ease. Occasionally one or two old friends, who perchance had hardly seen him for years, would be taken into the Greek Room to talk to him for ten minutes....

Not the least strange thing was that General Lingard apparently enjoyed it all. Sometimes, nay often, he said a deprecating word or two to one or other of his hosts--a word or two implying that he saw the humour of the whole thing. But within the next hour he would be accepting rather shame-facedly the flattery lavished on him by some pretty, silly girl, or, what was more to his credit, listening patiently to an older woman's account of a son who was in "the service," and for whom the great man she was speaking to might "do something."

To the amateur soldier who in any capacity forms part of an army on active service, the most extraordinary thing, that which at once strikes his imagination and goes on doing so repeatedly until the campaign is over, is the fact that for most of the weary time, he and his fellows are fighting an invisible enemy.

During each of these long, unreal days when he had scarce a moment to himself, for it fell to his share to see that everything ran smoothly, d.i.c.k Wantele found himself engaged in close watchful combat with an invisible foe. He would have given much to be convinced that he was pursuing a phantom bred of his own evil imagination, and sometimes he was so convinced.

Then the mists with which he was surrounded would part, suddenly, and the fearsome thing was there, before him.

Mabel Digby was the first lantern which lighted up the dark recess into which Wantele's mind was already glancing with such foreboding.

It was the third day after his return home, and with the aid of telegrams and messengers a considerable party had been gathered together for what had been a really amusing and successful luncheon party. When the last guest--with the exception of Mabel, who hardly counted as a guest--had been duly sped, Mrs. Maule and General Lingard slipped away together; and Wantele offered to walk back with Mabel to the Small Farm.

They were already some way from the house, when she told him a piece of news that was weighing very heavily on her heart.

"Have you been told," she asked, "about Bayworth Kaye? He's at Aden, it seems, and seriously ill. They think it's typhoid. His parents only heard yesterday. They're awfully worried about him. Mrs. Kaye can't make up her mind whether she ought to go out to him or not."

And then, as he turned to her, startled, genuinely sorry, he saw a look on her young face he had never seen there before; it was a terrible expression--one of aversion and of pa.s.sionate contempt.

Mrs. Maule and General Lingard were walking together, pacing slowly side by side. Though a turn of the path brought them very near, Lingard was so absorbed in what Athena was saying that he did not see Wantele and Miss Digby. But Athena saw them, and with a quick, skilful movement she guided her own and her companion's steps in a direction that made it impossible for the four to meet.

Mabel Digby remained silent for some moments, and then she turned abruptly to Wantele.

"Why isn't Jane Oglander here?" she asked. "I thought you expected her last week. Her friend must be a very selfish woman!"

"I don't think Jane would care for the sort of thing we had to-day,"

Wantele said reflectively. Why had Mabel looked at Athena with so strange--so--so contemptuous a look? "Still, she'll have to get used to seeing him lionized."

"Write and ask her to come as soon as she can, d.i.c.k. It's--it's stupid of her to stay away like that!"

Wantele glanced round at the speaker; and then, to his concern and surprise, he saw that her face was flushed, her brown eyes soft with tears. "I was thinking of Bayworth," she faltered. "He looked so dreadfully unhappy when he went away, d.i.c.k, and--and I can't help knowing why."

The hours and the days wore themselves away quickly--all too quickly for Athena Maule and Hew Lingard, slowly and full of acute discomfort and suspicion for d.i.c.k Wantele.