Wantele also became aware, with a satisfaction he would have found it hard to a.n.a.lyse, that General Lingard was paying no special attention to his hostess; or rather, while paying Mrs. Maule all the attention that was her due, there was quite wanting in his manner any touch of the ardent interest, the involuntary emotion, which most men showed when brought in contact for the first time with Athena. And yet how beautiful she looked to-night! How full of that subdued, eloquent radiance which is the dangerous attribute of a certain type of rare feminine loveliness!

Mrs. Maule was making herself charming--charming, not only to the famous soldier who was her guest, but also to the dull old man who sat on her other side, and to his tiresome, pompous wife. She was also showing surprising knowledge of those local interests which she was supposed to despise.

Wantele's mind travelled back to the last time a dinner-party had been given at Rede Place.

Jane Oglander had been there, and on that occasion Athena had been in one of her ill moods, proclaiming with rather haughty irony her contempt for the dull neighbourhood in which she had perforce to live during certain portions of each year. Wantele remembered how he had watched her with a certain lazy annoyance, too content to feel really angry, for Jane Oglander had been divinely kind to him that day, and he had thought--poor fool that he had been!--that at last he was adventuring further than she had yet allowed him to do into her reserved, sensitive nature.

How little we poor humans know of what the future holds for us! Till a few days ago d.i.c.k had always thought of himself as a young man. To-night he felt that youth lay behind him--so far behind as to be almost forgotten--as the three young people talked and laughed across him to one another.

Athena was now talking to Mr. Pache, inclining her graceful head towards him with an air of amiable, placid interest; and, as Wantele noted with satirical amus.e.m.e.nt, Mr. Pache had the foolish, happy look that even the most sensible of elderly men a.s.sume when talking to a very pretty woman.

Mrs. Pache did not look either happy or at ease. Even to a nimble mind it is difficult entirely to readjust one's views of a human being. Till a short time ago, in fact till his name began to be frequently mentioned in the _Morning Post_, the worthy lady had considered Hew Lingard the black sheep of her husband's highly respectable family.

There had once been a great trouble about him. That was a good many years ago--perhaps as much as seventeen years ago, just at the time that dear Tom had had the measles. She had tried to pump her husband about it last night, but he had refused to say anything, which was very tiresome, and she couldn't remember much about it.

Hew Lingard had got into a sc.r.a.pe with a woman; that static, dreadful fact of course Mrs. Pache remembered. Such things are never forgotten by the Mrs. Paches of this world. It was worse than a sc.r.a.pe, for Hew had nearly _married_ a most unsuitable person--in fact he would have married her if the person hadn't at the last moment made up her mind that he wasn't good enough.

That was pretty well all Mrs. Pache could remember about it. She hadn't forgotten that rather vulgar phrase "not good enough," because her husband had come back from London to Norfolk, where they were then living, and had walked into the room with the words: "Well, it's all over and done with! She's gone and married another young fool whom she has had up her sleeve the whole time! She didn't think Hew Lingard good enough!"

Hew had taken the business very hard, instead of rejoicing as he ought to have done at his lucky escape. And they, the Paches, had seen nothing of him for many years.

Three years ago, however, dear Tom had made her write to Hew Lingard, and though Hew had refused her kind invitation, he had written quite a nice letter.

This time both she and her husband had written to him, reminding him--strangely enough, they had both used the same phrase in their letters--that "blood is thicker than water," and urging their now creditable relative to pay them a _long_ visit.

In accepting the invitation, Hew Lingard had announced his engagement to Jane Oglander--the Miss Oglander whom they all knew so well, the Jane Oglander who was often, for weeks at a time, one of their nearest neighbours, and who, everybody had thought, would end by marrying d.i.c.k Wantele!

Still, to-night Mrs. Pache told herself that Hew Lingard's engagement to Miss Oglander was odd--odd was the word which Mrs. Pache had used in this connection, not once but many times, when discussing the matter with her sleepy husband on the night Hew Lingard's letter had come, and when eagerly talking it over with her daughter the next morning.

It was so _odd_ that Jane Oglander had never spoken of General Lingard.

Surely she must have known that they, the Paches, were closely related to him? It was to be hoped that now Hew Lingard had become a great man, he was not going to be ashamed of the relations who had always been so kind to him, and who in the past, when he was an unsatisfactory, eccentric young man, had always advised him for his good.

What a pity it was that Hew had been in such a hurry! From what they could make out he must have gone and proposed to Miss Oglander the very day of his arrival in London.

And then there was that disgraceful story about Miss Oglander's brother.

It was indeed a pity Hew Lingard hadn't waited a bit! He might marry anybody now--a girl, for instance, whose people were connected with the Government, someone who could help on dear Tom, and get him promotion.

Jane Oglander was very nice, thoroughly nice, but she would never be of any use to the Pache family.

Such were the troubled and disconnected thoughts which hurried through Mrs. Pache's mind while she listened with apparent attention to her odd, but now celebrated kinsman. General Lingard was trying to make himself pleasant to his cousin Annie by telling her of a missionary expedition to Tibet.

Mrs. Pache had always been interested in missionaries; she was a subscriber to the S.P.C.K. The Society's publications satisfied that pa.s.sion for romance which sometimes survives in the most commonplace human being, especially if that human being be a woman.

Just now General Lingard was speaking with kindling enthusiasm of a certain medical missionary's fine work in West Africa. But Mrs. Pache's face clouded distrustfully. She had suddenly remembered a scene in her school-room, her children, Tom and his sister, together with two little friends, sitting round Hew Lingard listening with breathless interest to the adventures of another missionary.

This divine had sent home as relics the clothes he had worn when he had succeeded in converting a whole village in Africa, and Mrs. Pache vividly recalled the foolish verses which Lingard had declaimed to her young people with solemn face and twinkling eyes--verses which cruelly misinterpreted the missionary's intention.

Against her will the jingling lines ran in her head--

"He preached--and did not bore them; Their chief, a h.o.a.ry man, Replied, 'We are converted, But, to turn to other topics, Betrousered and beshirted, You're _outre_ in the Tropics.'

The preacher is convinced in turn And dresses--like his flock...."

She remembered with irritation how the children had insisted on making a copy of these absurd, most unbecoming, rhymes, and how they had continually sung them to the beautiful old tune of "She Wore a Wreath of Roses."

Mrs. Pache allowed her eyes to wander round the table. How wizened and old d.i.c.k Wantele was beginning to look! If poor Mr. Maule lasted much longer, Wantele would be quite middle-aged before he came into this fine property.

At one time--oh, long ago now, ten years ago, when they first moved into the neighbourhood, when Patty was only sixteen--Mrs. Pache had had a vague hope that d.i.c.k Wantele and her Patty might take a liking to one another. Oddly enough, quite the opposite had happened! Though thrown into the conventional intimacy induced by propinquity, Patty had disliked d.i.c.k from the first; she thought him priggish and affected, and he was never more than coldly civil; how odd now to think that till the other day, they had all vaguely supposed that he would end by marrying Miss Oglander....

Mrs. Pache looked fondly at her daughter. Patty didn't look as well as usual to-night--her gown showed too much red arm. No doubt high evening dresses were "coming in," for Mrs. Maule was generally in advance of the fashion.

Patty was leaning forward trying to join in the conversation of Mrs.

Maule and of her father. Mrs. Pache wished pettishly that Hew Lingard would stop talking. She wanted to hear what Patty was saying, and her wish became at last painted very legibly on her face.

"The Barkings? Oh, Mrs. Maule, they're such nice people! I do hope you will call on them"--Patty's voice was raised in unusual animation. And then her father's gruff voice broke in: "They were out when my wife called on them; but Lady Barking wrote a note asking Patty over to dinner. They have four men staying in the house just now, and only their married daughter to entertain them."

"Wasn't it lucky? And I enjoyed myself so much!" Everyone looked at the fortunate Patty. Even Wantele felt a thrill of lazy interest. Newcomers in a country neighbourhood count for much, and rightly so, to the old inhabitants.

"You remember what Halnaver House used to look like in the days of poor dear old Lady Morell? Well, now it's quite different! You remember the staircase, the famous old carved oak staircase?"

Patty looked round the table eagerly, and Wantele nodded a.s.sent.

"Well, they've taken the staircase away! They're building a most delightful house in town, right in the middle of London, and yet it's to be exactly like a country house! So they're going to put that oak staircase there, and they've installed a lift at Halnaver instead! You press a b.u.t.ton and the lift takes you up to any floor--even right to the very top of the house, where the garrets have been turned into the most delightful bachelors' rooms----"

"Oh Patty, you didn't tell me that," cried her mother. "What an extraordinary thing! Then where are the servants' quarters to be?"

"I did tell you, mother--I know I did! Where the old stables used to be, of course! They've built a wing out there. It really has become a wonderful house," said Patty happily. It was not often that she was listened to with such respectful attention. "By simply pressing a b.u.t.ton as you lie in bed you can lock and unlock the door of your room!"

"The house must be all b.u.t.tons"--observed Wantele thoughtfully.

But Patty went on: "One of the men staying there, a Major Biddell, said he had never stayed in such a comfortable house! In fact he said--and he seems to know everybody and go everywhere--that it was as comfortable as the Paris Ritz Hotel. Indeed, he went further, and declared that not even the Ritz Hotel has a quarter of the clever contrivances that Lady Barking has managed to put into that poor old place!"

"There can be no doubt at all," said Mrs. Pache, "that the Barkings will prove a most delightful addition to the neighbourhood." She looked insistently at Athena Maule. "I do hope you are going to call on them,"

she said.

Athena looked down. Mrs. Pache noticed with some irritation that her hostess had extraordinarily long and silken eyelashes. She almost wondered if they could be real.

"I think not," Mrs. Maule at last answered, very quietly.

Lingard was struck by the purity of her enunciation. To Mrs. Maule her father's tongue was an acquired language. As a child she had only spoken modern Greek and French.

"I have seen the Barkings. d.i.c.k and I pa.s.sed them once when we were driving. And then last week I found myself, for a few minutes, in a railway carriage with Lady Barking and her daughter----"

For a swift moment Athena, raising her eyes, looked straight at General Lingard; then her violet, dark fringed eyes dropped, and she added, "I dare say they are excellent people."

"They're much--much more than that!" cried Patty, offended.

"But surely a little noisy? I did not feel them to be of our sort--I mean Richard's and mine," said Athena. "We are very quiet folk. No," she threw her head back with the proud, graceful little gesture most of those present were familiar with--"I do not think it likely that we shall know the Barkings."