Athena again sank on to her knees. But all the humility had gone from the voice in which she uttered her words. "Oh, but you mustn't fail, Jane! It would kill me." She hesitated--"You will be very careful what you say to Richard? You will not--you need not mention----"

Jane put out her hand with a quick gesture as if to ward off the name Athena was about to utter.

"No, no," she cried vehemently, and it was the first time she had spoken with any strength in her tones. "You need not be afraid. Of course I shall mention no one--I think you can trust me, Athena."

CHAPTER XVIII

"Il y a des hommes qu'on trompe, et d'autres qu'on trahit, en accomplissant le meme acte."

Richard Maule heard the door of his bedroom close behind Jane Oglander.

He had been so ailing the last day or two that he had been obliged to stay upstairs with d.i.c.k's companionship as his only solace, and his cousin had persuaded him to say good-bye to Jane there.

She was only going as far as the Small Farm, to look after Mabel Digby who was ill. She would still be at Rede Place every day, but she was old-fashioned and punctilious; she did not wish to leave Mr. Maule's house without thanking him for his hospitality, not only to herself but to General Lingard, who had been asked there for her sake.

She had come upstairs about six, already dressed in her outdoor things, and d.i.c.k had left her for a few moments with Richard in order that she might say good-bye.

The few moments had prolonged themselves into half an hour, only half an hour, though the time had seemed a great deal longer to them both, and then she had left him with a gentle "Good-bye, Richard."

As he stared at the door which she had closed quietly behind her, Richard Maule wondered whether he would ever see her again. Indeed, he was not sure that he wished ever to see Jane Oglander again.

He had stood up to bid his guest good-bye, but, though he felt weak and a little dazed, he did not sit down again in his padded armchair near the fire. Instead, he went over to a gla.s.s case where were kept a number of fine old snuff-boxes collected by Theophilus Joy before there was a craze for such things.

Opening the case, he brought out from the back a snuff-box which had an interesting history. It was believed to have been a gift from Madame du Barri to Louis the Fifteenth. It was of dull gold, embossed with fleurs-de-lys.

Richard Maule's faithful valet thought he knew everything about his master that there was to know, but there was one thing, a trifling thing, that Mr. Maule had managed to keep entirely secret over many years. It was an innocent, in fact a womanish secret; it was simply that sometimes, not very often, he used a little rouge.

He kept the small supply he required, which lasted him a long time, in the snuff-box he now held in his hand. This box possessed the rare peculiarity of a false bottom.

What the careful valet never suspected, had naturally never entered into d.i.c.k Wantele's mind. All he noted was that on certain occasions his cousin was more flushed, and so looked in better health than usual.

Richard Maule's usual colouring was a curious chalky white, and those of his visitors whose breeding was perhaps not quite so perfect as it might have been, almost always commented, either to Mrs. Maule or to d.i.c.k Wantele, on Mr. Maule's peculiar complexion.

He closed the gla.s.s case, and went over to a narrow mirror near the fireplace. There, in a few moments, he achieved his very rudimentary "make up" with the aid of a small piece of cotton-wool.

Yes--now he looked better; placing the snuff-box on the table which was drawn up close to his chair, he rang, and then sat down.

He wished his man would come. He felt physically very uncomfortable and oppressed. The talk with Jane Oglander had shaken him almost as much--he was quite honest about the matter--as it had shaken her.

Poor Jane! d.i.c.k's pretty Jane! How strange that a woman like Athena should possess the power of putting such a creature as was Jane Oglander to torture.

Modern medical science has standardised the body much as mechanical science has standardised the most intricate machinery. Richard Maule, fortunate in a physician who kept in touch with every new discovery and palliative, had it in his power to fit his physical self for any special effort, especially if that effort were mental rather than physical.

The valet received careful instructions. Mr. Maule would rest both before and after his light dinner, till ten o'clock. Then, and not before, he would be glad to see Mr. Wantele. He felt, however, too far from well to receive General Lingard, as he so often did for a few moments in the evening.

Everything fell out as the master of Rede Place had ordained it should do. With the help of certain colourless and odourless drops, he relieved the oppression which was troubling him. He forced himself to eat more than usual. He read with what seemed to him fresh zest an idyll of Theocritus, and then he waited, doing nothing, his eyes on the door, till he heard his kinsman's light, familiar step on the bare floor outside.

d.i.c.k Wantele came into his cousin's bedroom very unwillingly. He wondered why Jane had stayed so long with Richard. He feared she had told him of her intention of breaking her engagement.

Wantele felt convinced that Richard Maule had seen nothing of the drama which had been going on round him--though never actually in his presence--during Lingard's long sojourn at Rede Place.

Every day Lingard spent about an hour with his invalid host, and Wantele was aware that those hours had been very pleasant to Richard Maule. The Greek Room had become a place where they all, with the exception of Athena, had fled now and again as if into sanctuary. There Jane, so Wantele had soon divined, spent her only peaceful moments, for her host was very dependent on her; when with him, she played chess or read aloud, always doing, in a word, something which perforce distracted her mind from everything but the matter in hand.

But Richard Maule had been very unwell during the last few days; compelled to take each night the opiate which was the one habit--the bad habit--he and his wife had in common. Conversation after half-past nine or ten o'clock, even of the mildest type, excited him, and gave him, even with the aid of a powerful opiate, a restless, bad night. Why then had he put off seeing d.i.c.k till ten o'clock?

The young man was in no mood to control himself, to a.s.sume the quiet, equable manner he always a.s.sumed. The hour just spent with those two,--with Athena and Lingard alone,--had tried his nerves.

Mr. Maule was dressed in the evening clothes he had put on early before saying good-bye to Jane Oglander. It was a little matter, but it surprised Wantele; his cousin, as a rule, was always eager to get into the dressing-gown in which he lived when upstairs.

"I had an odd conversation with Jane this evening----"

Wantele nodded his head. Then it was as he had feared,--she had told Richard.

"----and I wish to talk the matter over with you, d.i.c.k." He motioned the younger man to sit down, and there was a long moment of silence between them before he spoke again.

"Jane Oglander has got a very strange notion into her head; and I should like to know if she said anything of it to you. Perhaps"--a slight smile came over his unsmiling lips--"perhaps I ought not to call it Jane Oglander's notion, it is evidently the notion--plot would be the better name--of another person. Do you know anything of it, d.i.c.k?" He looked fixedly at Wantele.

"No, Jane said nothing to me--nothing that could be described in the terms you have used, Richard."

Wantele's face was overcast with an expression of anxiety and unease.

"Are you quite sure of that, d.i.c.k? I beg of you not to spare me."

"Quite sure, Richard."

"Jane seems to think----" Richard Maule was still looking at his cousin intently, and d.i.c.k Wantele moved under that look uncomfortably in his chair. "Jane seems to think," Mr. Maule repeated deliberately, "that it would be possible for my marriage with Athena to be annulled. From what I could make out, but Jane was--well, I'm afraid she was very much distressed at proposing such a thing to me,--she evidently thinks I ought to free my wife, that is my duty to make it possible, in fact, for Athena to start afresh--to marry again."

"Good G.o.d!"

"Yes, it's an odd notion--a very odd suggestion to come from a nice young woman. And it gratifies me to see that you too are surprised, d.i.c.k." There was an edge of irony in his low, tired voice. "I was very much surprised myself--surprised, first, that the notion had never before presented itself to Athena's active brain; and even more surprised," he spoke more slowly and all the irony was gone, "that the suggestion should have come in any way through Jane Oglander."

d.i.c.k Wantele turned deliberately away and stared into the fire.

"I did not explain to her that what she was good enough to suggest was quite--well, impossible. That she had been, to put it crudely, misinformed."

d.i.c.k Wantele stared at his cousin. "You did _not_ explain that to her, Richard?"

"No, I wished to consult you about the matter, and hear what you had to say. The scheme of course originated with Athena. Our English marriage laws make life very difficult to the sort of woman I have the honour to have for my wife."

The other made no answer.

"You never even suspected that such a plot was in the hatching?"

insisted Richard Maule. "I want a true answer, mind!"