"This modern picture, only painted ten years ago, fetched ten thousand pounds at Christie's last week. It is a portrait of the beautiful Mrs.

Richard Maule in the character of a Greek nymph. Mrs. Maule, before her marriage to the well-known owner of Rede Place, one of the show places of Surrey, was Miss Athena Durdon. Her father was British Consul at Athens, and her mother a Greek lady of rank; hence her interesting and unusual Christian name."

"Why, it's Jane's friend," he said to himself. "How very odd that I should see it here and now!"

General Lingard had glanced at the ill.u.s.tration, when his eye had first caught sight of it, with distaste. But now that he knew that this rather fantastic picture was a painting of the dearest friend of the woman who was going to be his wife, he looked with kind, considering, and even eager eyes at the Greek nymph.

The famous soldier did not find it easy to adjust his imaginary portrait of Athena Maule, Jane Oglander's Athena, to this lovely embodiment of a pagan myth. But artists, or so he supposed, sometimes times take strange liberties with their sitters--besides, this was not in any sense a portrait....

"Your train's in, sir. Redyford is the second station from here."

He turned away and walked quickly to the side-platform where the short local train was standing ready to start.

There were still some minutes to spare, and Mrs. Maule, on her way to the train, stopped and looked up with a curious sensation in which pleasure and anger both played a part, at the dado formed of the two pages taken from the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_.

Only one of those pages--that which was a reproduction of the picture sold the week before at Christie's--attracted her attention and aroused in her very mixed sensations: pleasure at the thought that her portrait should be displayed in a fashion so wholly satisfying to her own critical and now highly educated taste; anger at the knowledge that the splendid painting had been sold to an American, instead stead of taking its place in the picture-gallery of Rede Place. When the picture had suddenly come into the market, she had ardently desired that her husband should buy it, and she had even ventured to convey her wish to him through his cousin, d.i.c.k Wantele, but to her mortification Richard Maule had refused.

Mrs. Maule now remembered with a sharp pang of self-pity the circ.u.mstances which had surrounded the painting of this picture. A portrait which her husband had commissioned the famous artist to paint of her was scarcely begun when the painter, who had taken an adjoining villa to theirs at Naples for the winter, had asked her whether she would sit to him in the character of a Greek nymph. Pleased and flattered, she had a.s.sented. Then, mentioning what she was about to do to her then indulgent and adoring husband, he, to her great astonishment, had disliked the idea: disliked it sufficiently to beg her as a personal favour to himself to make some excuse for not keeping her promise.

But even in those malleable days Athena Maule was incapable of denying herself a fleeting gratification. While appearing to a.s.sent to her husband's wish she had secretly fulfilled her promise to the artist, and the picture had excited such keen admiration when it was first exhibited that it had made Mrs. Richard Maule's beauty famous even before she came to England. The episode had also resulted in her first serious quarrel with Richard Maule.

When he had first seen the painting--for rather against her will the great artist had insisted on showing it to him--Mr. Maule had expressed an admiration it was impossible not to feel for the technical qualities of the work, but he had refused, with angry decision, any thought of commissioning a replica for Rede Place.

At last Mrs. Maule made her way to the train, and deliberately she chose a carriage which had, as its one occupant, the man she had noticed standing by the bookstall a quarter of an hour before. She had liked the look of him then, and she liked it even more now. She wondered where he was going to stay--whether with people she knew.

As she sat down in the opposite corner, she glanced at him with instinctive interest and curiosity; he was lean and brown, and his face had the taut, tense look of the man who achieves--whose life is spent in combating forces greater than himself.

She longed for something to distract her mind from the emotion--a mingling of impatient annoyance and self-pity--induced by her parting scene with Bayworth Kaye. She blamed herself for having come to Selford Junction; they, she and Bayworth, had said good-bye, in a real sense, yesterday. Why, acting on a good-natured impulse, had she been so foolish as to write him a last word saying she would come and see him off? He had not understood, poor fellow--men never did. Instead of having something touching, sentimental--in a word, soothing to look back to--there would only be a sad, painful memory. She was still, even now, haunted by young Kaye's desperate, unhappy eyes--and yet she had been so kind, so very kind to him!

Yes, she had made a mistake in coming to Selford Junction. With a pettish movement she pulled down her veil yet further over her face.

Three more travellers made sudden irruption into the railway carriage, and both Athena Maule and the man opposite to her turned round with frowning faces; they were one in their dislike of noise and vulgarity.

But the man soon looked away, indifferent to his surroundings; he opened a German Service paper, and was soon reading it intently.

Athena Maule glanced distastefully at the three people who had just come into the carriage. She knew them to be a Lady Barking and Lady Barking's married daughter, very wealthy people new to the neighbourhood. They had been pointed out to her by her husband's cousin, d.i.c.k Wantele, only a day or two before, driving past in one of the horseless carriages which were then becoming the fashion, but with which Richard Maule obstinately refused to supersede--or even allow them to be added to--his stables.

She also knew, and in a more real sense, the man who was with the two ladies. He was a Major Biddell, one of those men only to be found, so Mrs. Maule now reminded herself, in hospitable England. Such men drift about from country house to country house, making themselves useful to the hostess; they are able to take part with modest success in any of the games and sports that may be going on; and with advancing years they endear themselves to the dowagers by an unceasing flow of malicious and often very unsavory gossip.

Athena Maule had no use for this type of man, and as for the particular specimen who was now fussing round his two companions, thrusting ill.u.s.trated papers into their hands, pulling up and down the window, and offering to change seats with them--she remembered that she had snubbed him once, cruelly. They had met at a moment when she was enjoying the new, the intoxicating experience of a suddenly acclaimed beauty.

She turned her head away, for she did not wish to be recognised by Major Biddell; and then, as the train moved out of the station, she suddenly became aware, not without a certain amus.e.m.e.nt, that she was being discussed by the two ladies.

The younger lady, "the vulgar married daughter," as Athena mentally described her, had opened the ill.u.s.trated paper with which Major Biddell had provided her, and begun looking at the reproduction of the picture which had fetched a record price at Christie's.

"If that is really like Mrs. Maule, then she's a very beautiful woman,"

she said thoughtfully. "Is she really very like that, Major Biddell? You know her, don't you?"

"Oh yes. I know her quite well," he said promptly. "She often stays with the Kershaws of c.u.mberland, old friends of mine."

He bent his sleek head over the page, and jerked his eyegla.s.s in and out of his right eye. "H'm," he said, "rather a fancy portrait that! I doubt if the fair Athena was ever as lovely. Of course she may have been when she first married poor Maule, a matter of fifteen to sixteen years ago."

"Has she been married as long as that?" said Lady Barking. "I _am_ surprised! I thought Mrs. Maule was still quite a young woman."

"She's fairly young still--but then Maule married her when she was almost a child. She was Greek, you know, and the women blossom and fade very quickly out there. But still, I'm not denying that she's good-looking. In fact she's still an uncommonly handsome woman," he admitted generously. "I saw her at Ascot this year, and I was quite struck by the way she was wearing."

The elder lady leant forward with sudden eagerness. "If you know her so well"--she hesitated--"I wonder if you would mind going over and seeing her, Major? Rede Place is the only house that hasn't called on us since we've been in the neighbourhood."

Major Biddell shook his head very decidedly.

"Oh no," he said, "you don't understand the kind, my dear lady! It's true that I do know her very well in a sense--but the likes of her doesn't condescend to look at the likes of me," he laughed uncomfortably. "She has no use for any one who isn't in love with her, or who hasn't been in love with her. The first time I saw her the whole crowd were at her feet. I was the only one who stood apart, so you can imagine whether she likes me or not!"

"Do tell us, Major Biddell; is it really true that----" the voice dropped, but the two other silent, unknown occupants of the carriage caught a word or two which the young lady who spoke them had certainly not intended them to hear.

"They're all like that in her particular set," declared Major Biddell briefly. He looked round uncomfortably. It is always a mistake to talk of people, especially women, by their names, in a railway carriage or any other semi-public place.

Then the mother chimed in: "One does hear very peculiar stories about her, Major."

The little man winced. "Well," he said, "there's a lot of excuse for her, isn't there? Think of the state Maule's in! There she is, a beautiful woman tied to a kind of mummy!"

"I don't think a woman, however good-looking she may be, has any excuse for breaking her marriage vows," said the elder lady uncompromisingly.

She felt that Major Biddell was not behaving very nicely to her. She had understood that he was a very useful man to know, but during the last two or three days it had begun to strike her that he was a selfish little man. Of course he could have contrived a meeting between herself and Mrs. Maule if he really had a mind to do so! She also felt indignant with him for pretending to her and to her daughter that there was nothing specially scandalous in the behaviour of Mrs. Maule.

Why, everybody knew what Mrs. Maule was like! Even before she, Lady Barking, had become a part of Society, she had heard of the beautiful Mrs. Maule and her "goings on"; and in this part of the world the escapades of Mrs. Maule, the extraordinary things she had been known to do, were the standing gossip dish of the neighourhood. Even now, everyone was talking of the way in which she had bewitched young Bayworth Kaye, the Redyford clergyman's son, during the last few months.

It was absurd for Major Biddell to pretend that Mrs. Maule was just like everybody else!

Perhaps something of what she was feeling betrayed itself on her large, round face, for Major Biddell moved a little nearer to her. After all, Lady Barking was his hostess, and he desired to stay on at her comfortable, luxuriously appointed house for at least another ten days.

"I see you know a good bit about her," he said, grinning. "I can tell you one really funny story about her," and then he proceeded to tell it, the two hanging on his lips, though the elder of his listeners felt uncomfortable, half-ashamed at listening so eagerly to what in another mood she would probably have described as "garbage."

A hand was suddenly laid on Major Biddell's shoulder. He faced about quickly. A stranger of whose presence in the railway carriage he had scarcely been aware, was standing before him, tall, grim, formidable.

"I must ask you, sir," the stranger spoke very clearly, "to withdraw every word that you have said concerning Mrs. Richard Maule. As for the story you have just told, you and I heard it at Undulah a good many years ago. It was told--I remember the fact, if you do not--of another lady, of, of--no matter--" he stopped himself abruptly.

Major Biddell jumped up. If no gentleman in the higher sense of the word, he was also no coward.

"I shall say exactly what I like," he said sharply, "and I question your right to interfere with me in any way. You say you met me at Undulah a good many years ago? If that's the case, you have the advantage of me!"

There was a moment's pause; then it was broken by a nervous laugh and a whisper from daughter to mother, "Poor man, I suppose he's another of Mrs. Maule's victims!"

"Perhaps I should add," said the stranger, his voice thick with anger and contempt, "that though I have never met Mrs. Maule, I know quite enough of her to be a.s.sured that this vile gossip, these--these foul allegations, are utterly, d.a.m.nably untrue."

Major Biddell felt very much relieved. For a horrible moment he had supposed, not unnaturally, that the man who had just administered so sharp a rebuke to him was nearly related to Mrs. Maule. He had at once realized that the speaker was a member of the profession he had once adorned, nay more, he was uncomfortably aware that the man's dark face had been seen by him before. The unpleasant stranger was eccentric--to say the least of it. But of course there are such men in the world--Major Biddell thanked G.o.d he hadn't hitherto met many such--who go through life breaking lances for the s.e.x.

The little scene was over in a very few moments, and, after one quick look round, the woman who sat in the furthest corner had apparently taken no interest in what was going on. Her face was turned away. She was staring out of the narrow window. Major Biddell, glancing at her apprehensively, could only see her slim, straight back, and the veil twisted round her small hat hiding the dark shining coils of hair.