Jane Oglander

"Quand le cœur reste fidèle, les vilenies du corps sont peu de chose. Quand le cœur a trahi, le reste n'est plus rien."

Athena, sitting alone in the boudoir, heard the return of the two men; but she waited in vain for Lingard to come to her, as he always did come to her, with that blind longing for her presence which he was only now, with dawning consciousness, beginning to resist.

To-night instinct, the wise instinct which always stood her in good stead in all her dealings with men, warned her against seeking him out.

Mrs. Maule had no wish to make Lingard either an unwilling or even a willing accomplice in the scheme which was to result in their ultimate happiness. She had gone quite as far as she dared to go with him the night before. Treachery is one of the few burdens which a human being can bear better alone than in company.

Athena realised that Lingard now regarded his violent, unreasoning attraction to herself as a thing of which to be mortally ashamed. But she was convinced that, once his engagement to Jane Oglander was at an end, he would "let himself go," especially if he was convinced that she, Athena, had been blameless.

And her instinct served her truly. Lingard, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the long day spent away from Rede Place, was in no mood for a renewal of the sentimental dalliance to which Athena had accustomed him.

What had happened—the quick exchange of words, his echo of Mrs. Maule's longing for freedom from a tie which she had led him to believe had ever lacked reality, had brought him, and roughly, to his bearings.

The evening which had followed, spent in company with the two women—the woman to whom he owed allegiance, and whom he had held but a few hours before in his arms, and that other woman who had provoked the unreal words of which he was now ashamed, had contained some of the most odious moments of his life.

He had hailed with intense relief the engagement which took him away for a whole day; and on his return he had gone straight to the sitting-room set apart for his use, his supposed work, and where, after the first two days of his stay under Richard Maule's roof, he had spent so little of his time.

The rather elaborate apparatus connected with the book he was engaged in writing, filled him with contempt for himself. There were the maps, the books, the reports of his staff, his own rough notes, and—in a locked despatch-box—the long diary-letters he had written to Jane Oglander during the course of the Expedition.

The man who is all man, whose nature lacks, that is, any admixture of femininity, is almost always without the dangerous gift of self-analysis. Such a man was Hew Lingard.

All through his life he had always known exactly what he wanted, and when denied he had suffered as suffers a child, with a dumb and hopeless anger. It was this want of knowledge of himself that had ever made him ready to embark blindly in those perilous adventures of the soul in which the body plays so great a sub-conscious part.

Now, for the first time in his life, Lingard did not know what he wanted, and the state in which he found himself induced a terrible and humiliating disquietude.

His was the miserable state of mind of a man who finds himself on the point of becoming unfaithful to a wife who is still loved. Jane Oglander, even now, seemed in a most intimate sense part of himself. When he had seen her the first time—it had been in summer, in a garden—he had experienced the strange sensation that he had at last found the woman for whom he had been always seeking, and whom he had always known to be somewhere waiting, could he but find her.

Almost at once he had told Jane that he loved her, and almost, even then, had he convinced her that it was true. He had not tried to bind her by any formal engagement, and he had kept to the spirit as well as to the letter of the law. The long diary-letters which he had written to her day by day, and which had reached her at such irregular intervals, were not in any obvious sense love-letters.

He had felt that wherever he was she was there too, and sometimes, when he was in danger, and he was often in danger during those two years, the sense of Jane Oglander's spiritual nearness became curiously intensified. Now that they were together, under the same roof, she often seemed infinitely remote.

Could he now have analysed his own emotions—which, perhaps fortunately for himself, he was incapable of doing—he would have known that his chance of being faithful to Jane would have been increased rather than decreased had they not spent together that week in London.

He had come to Rede Place in a state of spiritual and physical exaltation which had made him peculiarly susceptible to any and every emotion, and for a time he had believed the feeling he was lavishing on Athena Maule to be pity—a passion of pity for one who had been most piteously used by fate.

The physical exercise of the day's shooting, spent in a place entirely lacking the emotional atmosphere induced by Athena, had restored Lingard's sense of perspective. With a rather angry discomfiture he realised that he had become afraid of Mrs. Maule and of her power over him. For the first time since he had known her he had been free of Athena, and then, as he and Dick Wantele got nearer and nearer to Rede Place, it had almost seemed as if she were beckoning to him, and he had longed to respond to her call....

It had required a strong effort of will on his part to go straight upstairs instead of to the room where he knew her to be.

For the first time in his life Lingard did not know what he wanted, or, rather, he was grievously aware that one side of his nature was imperiously demanding of him something he was determined not to grant. Last night he had thrown a sop to the ravening, hungry beast, but that, so he now swore to himself, should not happen again.

It was seven o'clock when Athena heard a key being turned in the lock of the Garden Room, and her eyes quickly sought the place where her own key was always kept. It was in its place; Lingard always returned it with scrupulous care immediately after having used it.

Then it must be Dick Wantele who was coming into the house. She wondered where he had been—perhaps to the Small Farm to fetch Jane Oglander.

What a fool Dick was! And yet—and yet not such a fool after all. Dick, if he were patient—Athena smiled a little to herself—and he certainly would be patient, might yet be granted the wish of his heart. Jane Oglander's marriage to Dick Wantele, so Mrs. Maule now admitted to herself, would be a most excellent thing for them all.

Yes—the two she would fain see become lovers had come in together; she could hear their voices in the corridor. And then, to her surprise, the door opened, and Wantele came in alone.

Athena felt suddenly afraid—afraid and uncomfortable. She told herself angrily that her nerves were playing her odious tricks, for as Dick came towards her she had the sensation, almost the knowledge, that he longed to strike her, and it was a very odd, a very unpleasant, sensation.

He came up close to her. "You know that Jane Oglander intends to break her engagement?" he said abruptly, and there was an angry, a menacing expression on his face.

Athena regained complete possession of herself. She felt quite cool, ready to parry any attack.

"Yes," she said quietly; "Jane told me this morning. I was surprised, but—not sorry, Dick."

He made no answer, dealt her none of those quick, sarcastic retorts of which he was master. She looked at him fixedly. He had no business to come in and speak to her like that!

"No one who knows and—and likes them both can think them suited to one another. You know that as well as I do, Dick."

"I deny it absolutely," he cried, "and even if it were true I shouldn't care! Our business in this matter—yours and mine—is to stand by Jane. I take it that you won't deny that Jane loves Lingard?" And then he went on, without waiting for her assent: "Do you remember the letter she wrote to you—the letter you showed me? That showed how Jane felt—how she now feels."

Her lips framed a sentence in answer, but she changed her mind and did not utter it. There was no object in making Dick angry, angrier than he already was; for Athena was well aware that Wantele was very, very angry with her.

"And what do you think we can do?" she said slowly.

"Look here, Athena." He tried to make his voice pleasant, conciliating—and he actually succeeded. Then he wasn't angry, she thought, after all. "This matter is much too serious for you and me to fence about it. I asked you a few days ago to go away—I ask it of you again. After all, what you are doing now can lead to nothing. Lingard must give you but very poor sport, and what is sport to you—eh, what, Athena?"

She remained silent, listening to him with an odd look on her face.

He ventured further: "I feel sure that you had no idea that the matter would become serious, and I agree that if Jane were a different sort of woman she would understand——"

"Understand what?" she said haughtily. "Are you accusing me of breaking off Jane's engagement? I did not think, Dick, that even your dislike of me could go so far. Till she told me this morning, I had no idea she thought of doing such a thing."

Wantele shrugged his shoulders, but he was determined not to lose his temper.

"I don't accuse you," he said slowly, "and I don't wish to be unfair. We'll put it in another way, Athena. Lingard came—saw—was conquered! It's no use our discussing it at this time of day. Still less is it any use for you to try to deny it; you and I both know what happened. I think—nay, I'm quite sure—that if you were to go away, everything would come right between these two people."

"And do you really wish everything to come right between Hew Lingard and Jane Oglander?"

Athena looked at the man standing before her in a very singular manner. Her voice was charged with significance.

He met her challenging look quite coolly. "Yes, I do wish it to come right," he said, "because I believe that it would be for Jane's ultimate happiness. Come, Athena, make an effort!"

He spoke good-humouredly, as a grown-up person speaks to a spoilt child, and a cruel little devil entered into Mrs. Maule's mind.

"Isn't it funny," she said lightly, "how Jane the Good, and I, Athena the Bad, always attract the same man? They don't always like us at the same time, but——"

She stopped speaking, for Dick Wantele had turned and left the room, leaving the door open behind him, a thing he very seldom did.

"Nous devrions baiser les pantoufles de certaines femmes du côté où les pantoufles touchent à la terre, car en dedans ce serait tout au plus digne des anges."

The long day came to an end at last. Jane felt a sense of almost physical relief in the knowledge that to-morrow night she would no longer be there, and yet she had not spoken of her decision to the others.

For Athena Maule the day was not yet over. She waited till the house was sunk into darkness and stillness, and then, dismissing her maid, she put on a dressing-gown and went downstairs to the library.

The book she had mentally marked down that morning was found by her in a moment; but instead of looking at it there she took it to her boudoir. It was possible that Wantele—Wantele who had been so rude and unkind to her this afternoon—might, like herself, feel wakeful, and come down to the library.

With the heavy old law book in her arms, she made her way through the now dark corridor which ran the whole length of Rede Place till she reached her own sitting-room, and there, before turning up the light, she locked the door.

Then she sat down, and drawing forward a little table she spread the book out open before her.

The dying wood fire suddenly burst into flame; Athena looked round her. She wondered if she would ever have so pretty a room again.

There was no hurry; she knew all that it was really necessary for her to know, thanks to Maud Stanwood's idle words.

Maud Stanwood? What would Maud Stanwood say of her when she heard what Mrs. Maule was about to do? So wondering, Athena suddenly made up her mind that there would be no necessity for her to go on knowing that lady. A woman who talked as Maud Stanwood talked would be no friend for General Lingard's wife!

The important thing—the one thing she must find out, and that this book would doubtless tell her—was how long a period must elapse after the dissolution of her marriage to Richard Maule before any second marriage contracted by her would be legal. She was aware that after a divorce a full six months must elapse between the Nisi and the Absolute; also that it was actually left to the good feeling of the offended party—that was very unfair—as to whether the decree should be made absolute at all.

Athena felt a tremor of fear. It would indeed be an awful thing if she put it into Richard's power to leave her in the disagreeable, the ridiculous, position of being neither married nor single.

But thanks to the excellent index of this useful work on the marriage laws of England, it only took Mrs. Maule a very few moments to discover that in this important matter her fear was quite groundless. Once judgment was given—once, that is, a marriage was dissolved—there was no impediment to an immediate remarriage on the part of the injured party.

She looked up and gave a long, unconscious sigh of relief. There had been a secret, unacknowledged terror in her heart, that she might find, now at the last moment, some hidden snag.

Sitting back in her straight, carved Italian chair, she began to make a mental list of her large circle of acquaintances. Which of them would give her shelter during the weeks, nay the months, that must perhaps elapse before she would be free?

Mrs. Maule had but one intimate friend—that friend was Jane Oglander. She had little doubt that as soon as the painful business of the engagement was over, she and Jane would return to their old terms of unquestioning affection.

What a pity it was that Hew Lingard's rather absurd conscience and his—well, his sense of delicacy, would make any arrangement with Jane impossible! However, she knew several good-natured women who might help her through such a pass—especially if she could venture to whisper the truth as to what the future held for her....

But there were certain other facts it would be well for her to know before taking so important a step as that of consulting a lawyer. Athena Maule did not believe in trusting people too much.

Bending once more over the table, she set herself seriously to study the sense of the dry and yet very clearly expressed chapter containing the information she sought.

And then, as she read on, slowly mastering the legal phraseology, conning over the cases quoted in support of each assertion, it gradually became horribly, piteously plain to her that if her husband cared to defend the suit, she had but a very poor chance of obtaining what this work so rightly styled "relief."

The knowledge brought with it a terrible feeling of revolt and of despair to Athena Maule.

She pushed the book away, then got up and stared into a small Venetian looking-glass. She was frightened by what she saw there; the shock of her discovery had drained all the colour from her face, and, for the moment, destroyed her youth.

She turned away from the mirror with a feeling of sick disgust. Her face, as reflected there, actually reminded her of Richard's face. It was absurd, disquieting, that such a notion should ever come into her mind, and it showed the state in which her nerves must be.

She looked round her fearfully. The room on which she had wasted a regretful thought had become an airless cage in which she would have to spend all that remained to her of young life and of the wonderful beauty which had, so she now told herself bitterly, brought her so little happiness.

She had actually believed—how Richard would grin if he knew it!—that if she only could make up her mind to a certain amount of "scandal" and "publicity," she could free herself of him. How could she have supposed that the law—a law framed and devised by men—would put such a power in a woman's hand?...

And yet—and yet it was still true that nothing but Richard's will stood between herself and complete, honourable freedom—between her and the man who had in his gift everything that she longed for and believed herself specially fitted by nature to possess.

So much, and surely it was a great deal, the book which was still lying open on the little table made quite clear. If only Richard Maule could be brought to that state of mind in which he would consent to be merciful and leave his wife's suit undefended, all would yet go well.

Athena sat down again and began to concentrate her mind intensely.

How could she bend, coerce Richard to her will?—that was the formidable problem which was now presented to her, and she set herself to consider it from every point of view.

Mrs. Maule was afraid of her husband—it was an instinctive, involuntary fear; her whole being shrank from him with a dreadful aversion. When he had been hale and strong, adoring her with the rather absurd ardour of adoration a middle-aged man so often lavishes on a young wife, she had despised him. Now that he was stricken, old, and feeble, he inspired her with terror.

It had amused her to deceive him when he had been the doting, lover-like husband, in days which seemed to belong to another life; but now, when his sunken eyes gleamed as they always gleamed when staring into hers, seeming full of a cruel knowledge of the pardonable weaknesses into which her heart betrayed her, then her body as well as her spirit quailed.

Suddenly a great light came into the dark chamber of her mind. Athena Maule saw in a moment a way in which the problem might be solved. How amazing that she had not thought of it yesterday—even this morning!

Jane Oglander should be her advocate with Richard. Richard would do for Jane what he would do for no one else. That had been proved many times. To take a recent instance—how harshly he had always resisted his wife's wish to ask people to Rede Place! But when General Lingard had come into the neighbourhood, it was Richard who had suggested that Jane Oglander's lover should be bidden to stay, and to stay a long time.

Athena's face became flushed, fired with hope, with energy. She had been foolish to be so frightened. How fortunate it was that Jane had spoken to her—had told her of her intention to break the foolish engagement with Lingard! It made everything quite easy.

She shut the book—the sinister old book which had given her so awful a shock.

Why not go up and see Jane now—at once? It was still early, not much after midnight. Athena glanced at the tiny clock which had played its little part just before Jane's arrival at Rede Place in provoking Hew Lingard's avowal of—of weakness. Yes, it was only ten minutes past twelve. Jane was probably wide awake still.

Athena went to the library and carefully put back the volume in its place among the other legal books which had belonged to Wantele's father. Then she made her way, in the deep, still darkness, to the door of Jane Oglander's room. Knocking lightly, and without waiting for an answer, she walked in.

In old days this room had been known as "the White Room," now it went by the name of "Miss Oglander's Room." Only Jane Oglander ever occupied it.

Jane was asleep—sleeping more soundly than she had done for many days, but as the door of her room opened she woke, and sitting up turned on, with an instinctive gesture, the electric light which swung over her bed.

Athena came quickly across the room. She was wearing a rather bright blue silk wrapper, and her graceful form made a patch of brilliant colour against the varying whitenesses of the walls, of the curtains, and of the rugs which covered the floor.

"I couldn't get to sleep," Athena's voice shook with excitement and emotion, for she was going to take a great risk—to stake her whole future life on one throw. "Somehow I guessed you were awake, like me."

Jane looked at Athena without speaking; she was telling herself that Hew could not help being enthralled—that no man could have helped it. She had never seen her friend look as lovely as she looked to-night; and there was a pathetic, a very appealing expression on the beautiful face now bending over her.

Mrs. Maule kissed Jane Oglander.

Then she straightened herself.

"I can't sleep because I keep thinking of all you told me this morning," she said at last. "I know you don't want to talk about it, and yet—and yet I feel I must tell you that what you told me is making me wretched, Jane. Are you sure that you really wish to break off your engagement?"

Jane was very pale; she was spent with suffering, and yet, as Athena saw with a pang of envy, she looked very young; her fair hair lay in two long thick plaits, one on each side of her face. It was that perhaps which made her look so young, so placid—so defenceless.

"It seems to me the only thing I can do," she spoke in a very low voice, but to the woman listening she seemed irritatingly calm.

Athena climbed on to Jane's bed, as she had so often done in the days when she and Jane happened to be at Rede Place together—days which had come far oftener four and five years ago than recently.

It hurt Jane to see Athena there. The contrast between the past and the present cut so shrewdly. She did not wish to judge her friend—or rather she did judge her, and very leniently.

Athena could not help what had happened. Of that Jane felt sure. But still Athena must know the truth—she could not but be aware of the effect she had had on Lingard; she must know that without meaning it she had witched his heart away.

But whatever Athena knew or did not know, any allusion to what had happened would be degrading to them both. Certain things slumber when left in peace; they leap into life if once discussed. Jane Oglander believed in the honour of the man she loved. Hew would go away, and in time he would batten down, fight and conquer his infatuation for Mrs. Maule.

"Of course I wish to break my engagement. But I would rather not talk about it," she said, at last.

"But I must talk about it!" cried Athena desperately. "You don't realise how I feel, Jane, how—how miserable, how ashamed I am about it all! Of course I know how you must be hating me."

An expression of anguish came over the younger woman's face. She believed her friend. But deep in her heart was breathed the inarticulate prayer: "Oh God, do not let her mention Hew—do not let her speak of Hew!"

Athena suddenly covered her face with her hands. "Oh, Jane, I could not help it," she wailed, in her low, vibrating voice. "Oh, Jane, tell me that you know I could not help it!"

"I know you could not help it," repeated Jane mechanically.

She was being tortured,—tortured with a singular refinement of cruelty. But even now she did not blame Athena. Athena had meant kindly by her in coming here to-night. But oh! if she would only go away. It was agony to Jane to see her there.

"He respects you!" whispered Mrs. Maule, leaning forward. "He admires you! He esteems you! Oh, Jane, I should feel proud if any man spoke of me as he speaks of you——"

But Jane did not feel proud. Jane felt humiliated to the dust. During the many miserable hours she had spent in the last fortnight, she had been spared the hateful suspicion that Hew Lingard ever spoke of her to Athena Maule.

And indeed Lingard had never so spoken, yet the strange thing was that Athena, when uttering those lying words, half believed them to be true. In the first days of her acquaintance with Lingard, she had herself said many kind, warm, affectionate things of Jane Oglander, to which he had perforce assented. It now pleased her to imagine, and even more to say, that it was he who had spoken those words of praise, of liking, of warm but unlover-like affection....

"If you only knew how he feels," she went on rapidly, "you would feel sorry for him, Jane, deeply sorry; not, as you have a right to feel, angry—angry both with him and with me! I'm afraid—I know, that often he feels wretched—horribly wretched about it all."

"I am very sorry," said Jane Oglander in a low voice, "sorry, not—not angry, Athena——" and then she stopped short.

"Sorry" seemed a poor, inadequate word, but it was the only word she could find. Her heart was wrung with sorrow, with unavailing, useless sorrow for both these unhappy people, as well as for herself. Judging them by what she would have felt had she been either of them, she believed them to be very miserable.

Athena was now huddled up on the bed. She was crying bitterly, her face hidden in her hands, the tears trickling through the fingers. She was dreadfully, dreadfully sorry for herself.

Jane Oglander could not see anyone as unhappy and as abased as she believed her friend to be feeling, and make no attempt at consolation. Bending forward, she put out her arms and gathered to her the slender rounded shoulders, the beautiful dark head.

"If only something could be done," she whispered, "if only there was a way out, Athena!"

Athena Maule raised her tear-stained face. Her moment had at last come.

"There is a way out," she said slowly, impressively.

She put the palms of her hands on the other woman's breast—"Tell me, Jane, would it make you very unhappy, would you ever be able to forgive me—if I married Hew Lingard?"

Jane looked at her with troubled eyes. "I don't understand," she faltered. "Do you mean when—when Richard is dead, Athena?"

"No. Of course I don't mean that! What a horrible idea! But, Jane, there is a chance that I may become free. It is difficult to explain, but you may believe me when I tell you that if Richard were a different kind of man, if he was noble, if he was high-minded, as you are noble and high-minded——" Jane shook her head.

"Yes, you are—you are——What was I saying? Yes: if Richard were different he could have given me my freedom long ago, and our marriage could be dissolved even now."

As the younger woman made no movement, said no word, only went on looking at her in puzzled silence, Athena drew herself out of Jane's arms, and there came a look of impatience over her face.

"You are not a child! Surely you know what I mean, Jane? You must have heard of marriages being annulled? Richard has kept me tied to him all these years—years that I might have been free."

And, again, the strange thing was that Athena Maule, as she said those words, believed them—with certain mental reservations—to be true. It was certainly true that for the last eight years she, a passionate, living woman, had been tied to death in life.

She would have been shocked, angered, had any still small voice reminded her that the scheme she was now determined to carry through was a new scheme, one that she had never considered seriously till now, though she had told the lie which was the keystone of her scheme so often that she had at last begun to believe it must be true.

"Oh, Jane!" she cried, and then she slipped off the bed and threw herself on her knees. "Oh, Jane, there is only one person in the world to whom Richard will ever listen——No, I'm wrong—there are two—there's Dick as well as you. But Dick"—a look of hatred for a moment convulsed her face—"Dick loathes me," she said slowly, "even more than Richard does," and this was true.

"You, Jane, are my only hope—mine and Hew's only hope——"

"Do you mean," said Jane slowly, "that you want me to speak to Richard, Athena,—to suggest his taking this step?"

For the first time Jane Oglander felt a touch of physical repulsion from Athena. It was a curious sensation, and one which troubled her exceedingly.

"Richard would have to do nothing—nothing! Simply leave my suit undefended. And if you could bring yourself to speak to him, Jane, I honestly believe that he might do now what he ought to have done long ago—release me. Nothing can give me back the years—the long miserable years I have spent with him, but I should at least have the future——"

She looked furtively at Jane. It would be so much more—well, comfortable, if she and Lingard could count on Jane's approval, on her blessing, as it were.

Jane Oglander lay back and turned her face away, to the wall. Athena, with remarkable self-control, stilled her eager, impulsive tongue. But the moments of waiting seemed very long.

At last Jane turned and once more sat up. She had made up her mind that it was her duty—her duty, not only to Athena, but also to Hew Lingard,—to do this difficult, this repulsive thing which was being required of her.

"I will speak to Richard to-morrow, Athena—but if he is shocked, if he is hurt by what I shall say to him—and I fear he will be both—you must not expect me ever to come back to Rede Place."

Mrs. Maule gave a little cry. It was only now that she realised how doubtful she had been of success. She might have known Jane better. Jane had always been her one loyal friend. Athena was fond of the word "loyal."

"Oh, Jane," she said humbly, "I—I don't know how to thank you. Will you mind very much?"

"You mustn't be surprised if I fail," Jane said slowly.

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."

"Il y a des hommes qu'on trompe, et d'autres qu'on trahit, en accomplissant le même 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 Dick'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 Dick 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 glass 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 Dick 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 Dick Wantele, on Mr. Maule's peculiar complexion.

He closed the glass 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! Dick'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.

Dick 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 Dick till ten o'clock?

The young man was in no mood to control himself, to assume the quiet, equable manner he always assumed. 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, Dick." 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, Dick?" 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, Dick? 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 Dick 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 God!"

"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, Dick." 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."

Dick 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."

Dick 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!"

Dick Wantele got up from his chair. He put his hand on the back of it and stared down into his cousin's face.

"Once, many years ago, Athena spoke to me as if such a thing would be possible," he said.

He never lied, he never had lied—in words—to Richard Maule, and he was not going to begin now.

"You mean in Italy, when I was ill?"

Wantele nodded his head, and then he felt gripped—in the throes of a horrible fear. It was as if a pit had suddenly opened between his cousin and himself, between the man whom he loved,—whose affection and respect he wished above all things to retain, for they were all that remained to him,—and his miserable self. He wondered whether the secret thing he feared showed itself in his face.

Richard Maule slowly got up. Wantele made an instinctive movement to help him, but the other waved him off, not unkindly, but a little impatiently.

"Dick?" he said. "My boy, I want to ask you a question—an indiscreet question. You need not answer it, but if you answer it, please answer it truly."

Wantele opened his mouth and then closed it again. He could not think of the words with which to entreat the other man to desist——

Richard Maule, looking at him, knew the answer to his question before he had uttered it, but even so he spoke, obsessed by the cruel wish to know.

"In Italy——?" His voice sank to a muffled whisper, but he did not take his eyes, his suffering, sunken eyes, from Wantele's tortured face.

Still the other did not—could not—speak.

"I knew it. At least I felt sure of it." He sighed a quick convulsive sigh, and then in mercy averted his eyes.

"But never here?" he muttered questioningly. "Everything was over by the time we came back here?"

"Yes, Richard. I swear it."

"I knew that too—at least I felt sure of it. I'm afraid you must have suffered a good bit, Dick?"

The younger man nodded his head. "I have loathed and I have despised myself ever since."

"I'm sorry you did that. I'm sorry I waited till now to tell you that I knew, that I understood."

"How you must have hated me!" said Wantele sombrely.

"Never, Dick. I—I knew her by then. If you had been the first"—he quickly amended his phrase—"if I had been fool enough to believe you were the first, I think it would have killed me. As it was," his voice hardened, "it only made me curse myself for my blind folly—folly which brought wretchedness and shame on you, Dick, and—and now, I fear, on Jane Oglander"—he saw the confirmation he sought on the other's face. "It's about Jane I wish to speak to you to-night. For a moment I ask of you to think of me as God——"

Wantele stared at Richard Maule; it was the first time his cousin had ever uttered the word in his presence.

"If I were God—Providence—Fate—and gave you your choice, would you choose that Lingard should marry Jane or that you should marry her?"

And as Wantele still stared at him in amazement: "Take it from me—I have never deceived you—that the choice is open to you. I don't wish to hurry you. Take a few moments to think it over."

"I—I don't understand," stammered Wantele.

"There is no necessity for you to understand. In fact I hope that, after to-night, you will dismiss the whole of this conversation from your mind. But I repeat—the choice is open to you."

And he added, musingly, "I think, Dick, that with the others out of the way you could make Jane happy—in time." But there was doubt—painful, deliberating doubt, in his tone.

Wantele shook his head.

"I don't agree," he said shortly. "You see, Richard, Jane"—he moistened his lips—"Jane's never loved me. She loves Lingard. And so, if God gave me the choice, I would give her to Lingard."

"You think well of the man?" Maule spoke lightly, and as if he himself had no reason to dissent from any word commending the soldier.

"You mustn't ask me to judge Lingard"—the words were difficult to utter, and he brought them out with difficulty. "I've been there, you see. I know what the poor devil's going through. I loved you, Richard—but that didn't save me. Lingard loved Jane, I believe he still loves her, and—and I should take him to be a man jealous of his honour—but neither his love nor his honour has saved him."

Wantele began walking up and down the room with long nervous strides. Then he stopped short—"What is it you mean to do, Richard?" he asked.

Richard Maule hesitated. He knew very well what he now meant to do, but he did not intend that his cousin should have any inkling, either now or hereafter, of his decision. And Dick, as he knew well, was not easily deceived. Still, he put his mind, the mind which was in some ways clearer, harder, than it had been before his illness, to the task.

"There are three courses open to me," he said slowly. "The one is to allow matters to remain as they are, in statu quo; the second is to do what Jane Oglander suggests—allow my wife to bring a suit for the dissolution of our marriage, and to allow it to go undefended—it is that which I should have done, Dick, had your answer been other than it was."

"And the third course?" Wantele was looking at his cousin fixedly.

"The third course, which I may probably adopt, will be for me to begin proceedings for divorce. I take it that Lingard knows nothing of the real woman? I mean, he looks at Athena as she looks at herself?"

Wantele nodded. That was certainly a good way in which to describe Lingard's mental attitude.

"But I have not quite made up my mind as to the best course," said Richard Maule. "I shall think the matter over for a day or two. But I fear—and I don't mind telling you, Dick, that the thought isn't exactly a pleasant one to me—that it must be what I said just now."

He beckoned to the other to come nearer, and Wantele did so, his pale face full of pain and anger.

"I want you to understand," his cousin added, in a low voice, "that when I've said that I've said all. The business won't affect me as it would most men. I never gave a thought to the world's opinion in old days, and why should I do so now?"

He spoke hesitatingly, awkwardly. It was disagreeable to him to be thus lying to his cousin—to be filling the heart of the man who loved him with a flood of indignant pity and pain. But the tragi-comedy had to be played out.

"I shall really feel very much more comfortable when it's all over," he said. "I don't fancy even lawyers waste as much time as they used to do over this kind of thing. And this case is so simple, so straightforward. I shall be sorry for the Kayes. But they must have known it. I fancy everybody in this neighbourhood knew it. People will pity Athena; they will agree that she had every excuse——"

He leant back in his chair. There was nothing more to say.

"Shall I call Carver?" asked Wantele solicitously.

"No. Not now. But I should be obliged if you will tell him that I shall want him in an hour. I shall try and read for a while by the fire."

Richard Maule waited till he heard the sounds of his cousin's quick footsteps die away. Then he rose feebly and walked over to the recess which had been fitted up as a medicine cupboard in the days of his childhood, when drugs were more the fashion than they are now.

In a wide-necked, glass-stoppered bottle were the crystals of chloral which he had long used in preference to the more usual liquid form. He knew to a nicety the dose which he himself could take with safety, the dose which sometimes failed to induce sleep.

He now measured out in his hand some three times his usual dose.

Had Dick Wantele's answer been different, Richard Maule would have administered to himself the crystals he now held in his hand. But Dick's decision—what the man of average morality would have regarded as his noble and unselfish decision—had signed another human being's death-warrant.

The thought that this was so suddenly struck Richard Maule as the most ironic of the many avenging things he had known to happen in our strange world. And, almost for the first time since he had formed his awful conception of the meaning of life, he knew the cruel joy of laughing with the gods, instead of writhing under their lash.

As he shook the crystals into an envelope and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket, he told himself that revenge was at last to be his. The gods were yielding him one of their most cherished attributes.

"The fact that the world contains an appreciable number of wretches who ought to be exterminated without mercy when an opportunity occurs, is not quite so generally understood as it ought to be, and many common ways of thinking and feeling virtually deny it."

Richard Maule turned the handle of his wife's bedroom door. A glance assured him that the beautiful room was empty. So far the gods whose sport he believed himself to be had been kind, for he had met no one during his slow, painful progress through the house, and Athena, as he knew well, would not be up for another hour.

Standing just within the door, he looked round the room with a terrible, almost a malignant, curiosity. The fire had evidently just been built up; it threw dancing shafts of light over the rose-red curtains of the low First Empire bed, at once vivifying and softening the brilliant colouring of the room.

Till to-night, the owner of Rede Place had never seen this oval bedchamber since it had been transformed nearly nine years before in view of the home-coming of his wife—the home-coming which had been delayed for two years after their marriage.

He had planned out with infinite care and lingering delight every detail of the decoration, taking as his model the bedchamber of the Empress Josephine at Malmaison. He and the expert who had helped him in his labour of love had journeyed out—even now he remembered the journey vividly—to the country house near Paris where Napoleon spent his happiest hours.

As for the room next door, the room which was to have been his, it had long ago been dismantled, and was now the sewing-room of his wife's maid.

Athena had arranged her life in a way that exactly suited her. She had lived on unruffled by the thunder-bolt, hurled unwittingly by herself, which had destroyed him. But a tree blasted by lightning outstands the most radiant of living blossoms....

He felt a wave of hatred heat his blood. Stepping slowly over the garlanded Aubusson carpet, he moved across the room till he stood by the side of the low, wide bed.

On a gilt-rimmed table was placed a crystal tray he well remembered, and on the tray were a decanter of water, a medicine glass, and a bottle of chloral. Above the wick of a spirit-lamp stood a tiny gold kettle filled with the chocolate which Mrs. Maule always heated and drank after she was in bed.

Her intimate ways of life were very present to her husband's memory. It was not likely that time had modified any habit governing Athena's appearance and general well-being.

He remembered the day they had first seen the gold kettle. It had been at a sale held in the house of one of those frail Parisian beauties who, following a fashion of the moment, had put up her goods to auction. The notion that his wife should possess anything that had once belonged to such a woman had offended Richard Maule's taste, and he had resisted longer than he generally did any wish of hers. But she had cajoled him, as she always in those days could cajole him into anything.

He put out his thin hand and noted with satisfaction that it was shaking less than usual. Slowly he lifted back the lid of the gold kettle.

Yes—there was the chocolate still warm, still in entire solution.

Straightening himself, Richard Maule stood for a moment listening....

Silence reigned within and without Rede Place. Steadying his right hand with his left, he shook the crystals of chloral he had brought with him into the dark liquid. Then he turned, and walked languidly towards the fire. The emotion caused by his short conversation with Dick Wantele had wearied him.

Suddenly there fell on his listening ears the sound of footsteps in the corridor. He knew them for those of his wife. But it was hate, not fear, that heralded Athena.

He turned round slowly, uncertain for a moment how to explain his presence there.

She swept in—God! how superb, how radiantly alive—and then gave a swift cry. "Richard! You have frightened me!" But she faced him proudly. "I've come up to find something I wish to show General Lingard——"

She turned on the lights, and Richard Maule, looking at her fixedly, found his first quick impression modified. Her lovely face was thin and strained. There were shadows under her dark, violet eyes. But even so, how strong she was, how full of vibrating vitality! By her side Richard Maule felt that he must appear dead, or worse, ill to death.

Athena was dressed in the purple gown she had worn the night Lingard had first come to Rede Place. So had she looked when she had opened the door of the Greek Room and led in their—hers and Richard's—illustrious guest.

There was something desperate, defiant in the look she now cast on him. She was telling herself how awful it was to know that this wreck of a man standing before her could hold the whole of her future in his weak and yet tenacious grasp! How cruel that this—this cripple should possess the right to grant or to deny what had become the crowning wish of her heart!

Perhaps something of what was in her mind penetrated to Richard Maule's quick brain.

"The ailing and the infirm," he said, staring at her fixedly, "are treated by the kind folk about them like children. They are never left alone. I do not choose that our household should know that I desire to have a private interview with you, and so I thought the simplest thing would be to come here and wait for you——"

"What is it you wish to say to me?" Her voice shook with suspense. She clasped her hands together with an unconscious gesture of supplication.

"I have brought you—I have brought us all—the order of release."

A feeling of exultant joy—of relief which pierced so keenly that it was akin to pain, filled Athena Maule's soul. She had indeed been well inspired to tell Jane all that was in her heart—and Hew's. And here was Richard actually saying so! For, "You chose a most excellent Mercury," he observed dryly.

"You mean Jane Oglander?" her voice again shook a little. "She was not my messenger. She asked my permission to speak to you——"

"Yes, I mean Jane Oglander. She showed me where my duty lay. For a while I hesitated between two courses—for you know, Athena, there were two courses open to me."

She looked at him without speaking. How cruel, how—how unmanly, of Richard to say this! And how futile. There was only one moment when he could have divorced her. Providence had stood her friend by choosing just that moment to make him ill. Since then—she thought she had learnt enough English law to know that—he would be held to have condoned.

But her look made him feel ashamed. The javelin does not thus play with its victim.

"I beg your pardon," he muttered almost inaudibly.

"I know you have always hated me," she said passionately.

"You have not known that always," he answered sombrely—and for a moment she hung her head.

"Perhaps now, Richard, we may be better friends."

She reminded herself that in old days—in the days when she had been his idol, his goddess—she had had a certain contemptuous fondness for her husband. She would be generous—now. Jane had taught her that it was good to be generous.

How true a friend had Jane Oglander been to her! Athena felt a rush of warm gratitude to the woman who still—how strange, how absurd it seemed—was engaged to Lingard. Jane, like the angel she was, would help them—Athena and Hew Lingard—over what must be for some time to come very delicate ground. Their progress, albeit that of happy and, what was so satisfactory, of innocent lovers, would be hampered with small difficulties. How fortunate it was, how more than fortunate, that Lingard's engagement to Jane had not yet been publicly announced....

"Have you told Dick?" she asked nervously. Her husband—he was still her husband—had smiled strangely as only reply to her kindly words. "Was it about that you wished to see him to-night?"

"No, I have not yet told Dick of my decision."

"I suppose it can all be managed very quietly?" she said plaintively. "I hope I shan't have to go and appear before a judge—or shall I?"

Richard Maule looked at her thoughtfully. "That is a thing I cannot tell you," he said slowly. "Many would say to you most confidently—yes, that you will have to appear before the Judge."

"I thought there was a thing in England called taking evidence on commission. You yourself, Richard, could not possibly appear in person. And then—I want to know, it is rather important that I should know"—her husband bent his head gravely—"if there will be any delay?"

"You mean any lapse of time before the decree can be obtained?"

Her eyes dropped. "Yes, that is what I do mean." In old days it had always been better to be quite frank with Richard.

"I think not. In this kind of case I think there is no delay. The legal procedure is quite simple."

He waited a moment. "You of course will bring the suit, and I shall not oppose it. You see, Athena,—no doubt you have been at the pains to inform yourself of the fact, for to my surprise Jane Oglander was aware of it,—the dissolution of a marriage carries with it no stain—no stain, that is, on the wife who has been so poorly used."

There came a look of raillery on his white face, and Athena again told herself that he was very cruel—cruel and heartless.

"The wife, I repeat, goes out into the world unsullied, ready, if so the fancy takes her, to become another man's bride—his wife in reality as well as in name."

He looked at her significantly, and added, more lightly, "The world has become more liberal since the days of my youth. I am sure there will be great sympathy felt for you, Athena. Such a marriage as ours is in truth a monstrous thing. I did not need Jane to tell me that, though it was odd of Jane to have thought of it."

There came over him a terrible feeling of lassitude. "And now I'm afraid I must ask you to help me to get back to my room."

This punishment he put on himself. He must not be met coming out of his wife's room alone.

"Of course!" she cried eagerly. "You know I would have done much more for you—I mean since you became ill—if you had only allowed it! But Dick was always jealous—Dick has always hated me!"

"Surely not always?" he said mildly.

"Yes, always!"

He would not take her arm, or lean on her. She simply walked by his side, her mind in a whirl of amazement, of gratitude, of almost hysterical excitement, till he dismissed her, curtly, at his door.

The hour that followed was perhaps the happiest hour of Athena Maule's not unhappy life. It bore a curious resemblance to that which had immediately followed Richard Maule's proposal of marriage, the proposal for which her father and mother, as well as herself, had watched and waited so anxiously. But now there was added what had been quite lacking before—a sufficiently strong feeling of attraction to the man who would place her in the position she longed feverishly to enjoy and adorn.

That Lingard, in the throes of his passion for her, should go through moments of acute self-depreciation and remorse, only made her feel her power, her triumph, the more.

She now came down to him gentle, subdued, as he had never yet seen her,—Nature provides such women with a wonderfully complex and full armoury—and Lingard, alas! once more under the spell, sprang towards her. The unexpected departure of Jane to the Small Farm had angered him.

"I have seen Richard." The pregnant words were uttered solemnly. "I found him, for the first time in my life, in—in my room. Jane spoke to him to-day, and he is going to release me, to let me out of prison—at last!" and then, not till then, Athena allowed herself to fall on Lingard's breast, and feel the clasp of his strong arms about her.

It mattered naught to her that the man who was now murmuring wild, broken words of love and passionate joy at her release from intolerable bonds, felt what the traitor feels—that his intoxication was even now seared with livid streaks of self-loathing and self-contempt.

She knew well that he would not trouble her overmuch with his remorse. She could almost hear him, in his heart, say the words he had said the night before Jane Oglander had come to disturb and trouble the sunlit waters into which they two had already glided. "It is not your fault,—any fault there may be is mine."

But just before they said good-night Lingard frightened Athena Maule, and sent her away from him cold, almost angry.

"If I were the brave man men take me to be," he said suddenly, unclasping the hands which lay in his, "I should go out into the night and shoot myself."

She had made him beg, entreat, her forgiveness for his wild, wicked words. But they frightened her—dashed her deep content.

Athena Maule did not know Hew Lingard with the intimate knowledge she had known other men who had loved her. But there was this comfort—about this man she would be able to consult Jane—Jane who was so kind, so reasonable, and who only wished to do the best for them both.

She reminded herself that men are always blind where women are concerned. If nothing else would convince Hew Lingard that Jane, after all, did not care so very much, then Jane must be persuaded, after a decent interval, to marry Dick Wantele. After what had happened to-day, everything was possible....

Athena, to-night, was "fey." She felt as if she held the keys of fate in her hands. But even so, she went on thinking of Lingard's bitter words long after they had parted, and when, having dismissed her maid, she was heating the cup of chocolate which sometimes sent her to sleep without an opiate.

And then, as she lay down among her pillows, there came over Athena Maule the curious sensation that she was not alone. Bayworth Kaye—poor Bayworth, of whom she had thought so kindly, so regretfully, only two nights ago—seemed to be there, close to her, watching, waiting....

Athena did not believe in ghosts, and so she did not feel frightened, only surprised—very much surprised.

She turned on the light and sat up in bed.

This feeling of another presence close to her—how strong it still was!—must be a result of the emotion she had just gone through, of her exciting little scene with Hew Lingard.

It was strange that she should think of Bayworth Kaye here, in this room where he had never been but once, and then only for a moment on a June night when they had both been more reckless than usual. It would have been so much more natural to have felt a survival of Bayworth's presence downstairs—when she had been in Lingard's arms....

Suddenly she was overwhelmed with an intense, an overmastering drowsiness, and, quite unconscious of what was happening to her, she fell back, asleep.

The light above the low rose-red bed was still burning when they found her in the morning.