Part 24 (1/2)
”I don't suppose,” said Mrs. Maule, at last looking up, and smiling into Jane's face, ”that you've even made up your mind where you will spend your honeymoon?”
She was feeling slightly ashamed,--ashamed and yet exhilarated by this absurd, make-believe conversation.
Jane shut the book she held in her hand, and put it down.
”Athena,” she said quietly, ”I did not mean to tell you yet, but now I think I had better do so. I am going to break my engagement. I see--of course I can't help seeing--that it's been a mistake from the beginning.”
”He was not good enough for you, Jane,” said Mrs. Maule impulsively.
”What he wants is a wife who will help him. You did not understand. I saw that from the first----”
Jane went on quickly:
”After all, men--and women, too, I suppose,--often do make that sort of mistake. It's a good thing when they find it out in time--as I have done. But I would rather not talk about it.”
She changed the subject abruptly: ”I feel rather worried about Mabel Digby. She's really quite ill. I thought of lunching there to-day, if you have no objection.”
”Yes, do go there! Surely you know I always want you to do just what you like when you're here?”
Athena's voice sounded oddly loud in her own ears. It seemed to her as if she had lost control over its modulations....
As the door of the library closed behind Jane Oglander, Athena Maule sat down. She felt oppressed, almost scared, by this piece of good fortune.
She had never thought things would be made so easy for her.
How mistaken she had been in Jane's att.i.tude, not only to Hew Lingard, but to life! And how mistaken Lingard had been! Athena could not help feeling a certain contempt for him; but all men, so she reminded herself, are vain where women are concerned. They always put a far higher value on themselves than does the woman on whom they are wasting their pity, their--their remorse.
Why, Jane had shown herself more than reasonable just now. She had made no stupid ”fuss,” attempted no disagreeable accusations. She hadn't even cried! But then, Jane Oglander was just--Jane; that is a sensible, a thoughtful, to tell truth, a cold creature! Athena, to be sure, had seen her moved, terribly so, over that business of her brother, but all the emotional side of the girl's nature had been exhausted over that sad affair.
What Athena was beginning to long for with all the strength of her being had now entered the domain of immediate possibility.
There would be some disagreeable, difficult moments to go through before she could become Hew Lingard's wife. Mrs. Richard Maule, sitting there in the library of Rede Place, faced that fact with the cool, calculating courage which was perhaps her chief a.s.set in the battle of life.
But she was popular, well liked by a large circle of people; she had little doubt that many of them would take her part--again she reminded herself that it would be very difficult for anyone to do anything else who, knowing her, had ever seen Richard Maule as he now was. She had heard of women doing far stranger things than that she was about to do in order to attain their wish.
She tried to remember the two or three names Mrs. Stanwood had uttered in a similar connection--but they were gone, irretrievably gone from her memory. No matter, the position of a woman whose marriage has been dissolved is quite other than that of a divorcee. Little as she really knew of English sentiment and prejudice, Mrs. Maule could be sure of that.
Athena's violet eyes grew tender. Hew Lingard respected as well as wors.h.i.+pped her; and should her dream, the delightful dream which was now taking such living shape, become reality, should she, that is, become Lingard's wife, she would never, never allow him to regret it.
She renewed, and most solemnly, the vow she had taken two nights ago.
Ah! yes indeed--her wild oats were all sown! Athena Lingard would be a very different woman from Athena Maule. Besides, as Lingard's wife she would be free of England for a while.
She remembered vividly the day that he had casually told her that he expected an appointment abroad, for it had been the first time she had realised how utterly unsuited Jane was to be Lingard's wife.
Athena possessed the confident belief in herself and in her own powers that every beautiful woman is apt early to acquire in her progress through an admiring world. Such a wife as herself would be of immeasurable use to such a man as was Hew Lingard. Of that she could have no doubt.
Hew was not exactly a man of the world, in fact he seemed astonis.h.i.+ngly indifferent to other people's opinion. Well, that told two ways. Just now, it was a good thing that he cared so little what others might say or think. Instinct told her that as long as he was at peace with his own conscience, his own sense of honour, Lingard would care mighty little what the world said--besides, the world would have nothing to say. They, she and Lingard, would have to be careful till the legal matter was settled--that was all.