But d.i.c.k Wantele got up. "Is this true, Athena?" he asked abruptly. "Is Jane engaged to General Lingard? What an extraordinary thing! Why, he hasn't been back from West Africa more than a fortnight."

She nodded. "Yes!--it's quite true. Apparently his parents were friends of her father ages ago. She knew him when she was a child. They met again quite by chance last time he was in England. Then he began to write to her. It all seems to have been arranged by letter. At least she says they corresponded all the time he was away, and then he appears to have gone straight to her on the evening of the day he arrived in London. I suppose," she concluded not very pleasantly, "that she could not dash his triumph--and so she accepted him. It is very difficult,"

she continued, "for a woman to say no to a hero."

d.i.c.k Wantele smiled. His eyes met hers with a curious flash of rather cruel raillery. Her own dropped for a moment; then they seemed to dilate as she went on, "I really do know what I am talking about, for you see, d.i.c.k, Richard was a hero when I married him. In Greece we all looked upon the great, the n.o.ble, the famous Mr. Maule as quite a hero!"

For a moment she allowed her full glance to rest on the unheroic figure crouching by the fire, and d.i.c.k Wantele felt keenly vexed with himself.

He was not often so foolish as to wage war with Richard Maule's wife in Richard Maule's presence.

All three hailed with relief the interruption caused by the announcement of dinner. Wantele got up with more alacrity than usual. He walked with a quick, sliding step to where Mrs. Maule was still standing. With a little bow he offered her his arm.

As they left the room Mr. Maule's valet came in by another door.

Quickly, noiselessly, he brought forward an invalid table and placed on it a tray. There was soup, some whole-meal bread, a little very fine fruit, and a small decanter of claret. Then after the man had asked, "Is there anything else you require, sir?" and had noted the scarcely perceptible shake of the head with which Mr. Maule answered him, the master of Rede Place was left alone.

Richard Maule looked at the silver bowl containing his half-pint of soup--everything he ate was measured and weighed and prepared with the most scrupulous accuracy according to a great doctor's ordinance--with a kind of fastidious distaste. Since his illness he had grown particular about his food, and yet as youth and man no one had been more indifferent than he to the kind of luxury by which most men set such store. During the years which had immediately preceded his marriage, it had been his boast that he could live for days and even weeks on the rough, unpalatable fare dear to the Greek peasant.

Steadying his right hand with his left, he ate a spoonful of soup, then pushed the bowl away. The news his wife had taken such malicious pleasure in telling had disturbed and pained him more than he thought anything could now disturb and pain him. He was attached to Jane Oglander; she was the only human being apart from d.i.c.k whose presence was, if not agreeable, at least not unpleasant to him. In the rare moments of kindly thought and musing on the future which sometimes visited him, he saw Jane mistress of Rede Place, bringing peace and, what is so much nearer the heart of life, love satisfied, to d.i.c.k Wantele. He had felt sure that Jane, with her tenderness, her simplicity of nature, would end where most women of her type end, by surrender.

That she would marry anyone excepting d.i.c.k Wantele had seemed impossible. But in this life, as Richard Maule had learnt far too late, it is what would have seemed impossible which happens.

d.i.c.k Wantele and Mrs. Maule sat opposite one another at a round table set at one end of the great tapestry-hung dining-room. A stranger seeing them would have thought the plain young man singularly blessed in having so lovely a table-mate sitting with him at so perfectly cooked and noiselessly served a meal as they were now enjoying.

But though there was a side of his nature peculiarly alive to certain sensuous forms of beauty, to-night Wantele only saw in Athena the malicious, almost the malignant, bearer of ill news.

But civilized man, if eating in company, must also talk, and so at last, "One sees now," he said reflectively, "why the worthy Paches have been so greatly honoured."

"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Maule. It was, she found, sometimes easier to ask d.i.c.k to explain himself than to try and guess what he meant.

"I mean," said Wantele, "that one can now understand why General Lingard accepted his dull relations' invitation. It was because he knew that his young woman would be in the neighbourhood, staying here with us."

"Your choice of phrase," said Athena sharply, "is not very refined."

"Isn't it?" he said mildly. "But then, Athena, I don't know that I ever set up to be a particularly refined person."

And then, as they sat sparring and jarring as they so often did at their quickly-served meals, d.i.c.k Wantele gradually became aware that Mrs.

Maule was eating nothing, nay more, that her short upper lip was trembling--large tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Why!--Athena?" he exclaimed. "You mustn't allow this unexpected news to"--he hesitated for a word--"to upset you so much." He looked up across at her with a not very kind curiosity. His light observant eyes suddenly seized on what was to him an amazing sight, namely that a folded letter, covered with a fine clear handwriting he knew with a dear familiar knowledge, was working up out of Mrs. Maule's short bodice and forming a grey patch on her white neck. In spite of himself, Wantele was rather touched.

"Of course I have always known that Jane was devoted to you," he said musingly, "but I didn't realise that the feeling was reciprocated to such an extent as it seems to be!"

A flush of stormy anger reddened Mrs. Maule's face.

"With Jane often here it has been bad enough!" she said pa.s.sionately.

"But what will my life be like henceforth?--I mean when I shan't even have her to look forward to? Richard will force me to be here more than ever now."

"I think you will still manage to be a good deal away----"

He had been right after all. Athena was only thinking of Jane Oglander's marriage as it affected herself.

"Of course I shall stay away as much as I can!" she cried. "You and Richard much prefer my absence to my presence----" her look challenged a contradiction Wantele did not--could not utter.

"And then--and then that isn't all, d.i.c.k! I didn't mind being here when Jane was here too to make things go well----"

"Perhaps Jane will sometimes leave her hero during the very few weeks of the year that you are, as it were, in residence, Athena. He's going, it seems, to be given a home appointment. I suppose they will be married very soon?"

Wantele did not look at her as he spoke. He was tracing an imaginary pattern on the tablecloth. The numbness induced by the horrible blow she had dealt him was beginning to give way to stinging stabs of pain. He longed to know more--to know everything--to turn as it were a jagged knife in his heart-wound.

Mrs. Maule dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, then she laughed.

"No, no, d.i.c.k," she cried, "there's no such luck in store for you--I mean for us! We're going to lose Jane--once for all. Jane has taken it rather badly. I never thought that dear saint would fall in love!" She suddenly became aware that his eyes were fixed on the letter she had thrust into the bodice of her gown when walking down the long gallery upstairs. She took it out of her warm and scented bodice, and held it out to him.

"I think you'd better read what she says."

Wantele looked at the pretty hand holding Jane Oglander's letter, but he made no attempt to take the folded paper. "I should _like_ to read it--"

he said lightly, "but I think I'd better not."

"Yes, do read it, d.i.c.k. Why shouldn't you?" She added slowly, "There's something about you in it too----"

Wantele hesitated, and then he fell. He leant over and took Jane Oglander's letter from her hand. His own was shaking, and that angered him. He turned his chair right round, and holding the two sheets of grey paper up close to his eyes deliberately read them slowly through.

As at last he handed them back to her, he said quietly, "You told me a lie just now, Athena. I am not mentioned in Jane's letter."

"Indeed you are!" She pointed to a thin line of writing across the top of the second sheet.

"'I hope d.i.c.k won't mind much'--" she read aloud.

"There's something else!" he cried quickly, and getting up strode round and took the letter again from her with a masterful hand. "'I hope d.i.c.k won't mind much'--" he read aloud, "'or dear Richard either.'"

Then he let the letter drop on the cloth beside her. The numbness had all gone, the pain he felt had become almost intolerable.

Mrs. Maule again tucked Jane Oglander's letter inside her bodice, then she got up. As he held the door open for her, Wantele put his hand, his cool, long-fingered, impersonal hand, on her arm.

"Athena," he said softly. "I wonder how it is that you have always had the gift of making me do things of which I knew I should live to feel ashamed. A unique gift, dear cousin----"

She turned and laughed mischievously up into his pale suffering face.

"The woman tempted me, and so of course I ate!" she exclaimed. "You're not much of a man, d.i.c.k, but you have always been a thorough man in the matter of making excuses for yourself!"

CHAPTER IV

"He smarteth most who hides his smart And sues for no compa.s.sion."