Part 25 (1/2)

Fortunately she was not compelled to consider either of these alternatives. She was mistress of her own life, and she had already learnt the hard lesson that to deaden pain--heart pain--there is nothing like incessant, unending work. She made up her mind to go to another part of London, and start once more the salvage work which lay on the edge of the great sea strewn with human wreckage.

But before Jane could do this, she must put an end to what had become, certainly to herself, and probably to Lingard also, an intolerable mockery.

Jane found Mabel Digby in bed; and the girl, though but little given to caresses, drew her down and laid her head on the other's kind breast.

”Yes, it's true,” she said, ”I'm ill, and I don't know what's the matter with me”--she lifted her face and pushed her hair back from her forehead with a tired gesture. ”No, I won't lie. I don't see why I should pretend--with you! I'm ill, Jane, because Bayworth Kaye is dead.

I lie here thinking--thinking only of Bayworth. It's all so horrible--I mean that he should have died when he was so unhappy. I burnt all his letters the day he went away. You can't think how sorry I am now that I did that, Jane. There was nothing in them, they weren't love letters--at least I don't think so----”

Jane gave a m.u.f.fled cry of pain.

”Jane, come nearer, and I'll tell you something which may make you think a little less poorly of me. Bayworth did speak to me three years ago, before he first went to India. I have never told anybody--not even his mother, though she was always trying to find out. And when he came back I was so happy--just for a few days--and then, almost at once, he fell into Athena's clutches----”

And as she saw the other make a restless movement of recoil she added, ”I suppose you don't believe me, but it's true--horribly true. I saw it all happening, but I could do nothing except feel miserable. I used to think--poor fool that I was--that everything would come right at the last. I thought she would get tired of him, and that I would get what was left.” She broke into hard sobs. ”She did get tired of him--but too late--too late for me!”

”I wonder, Mabel, whether you would like me to come and stay with you for a few days.”

Jane felt that the way was at last opening before her. The grief, the angry pain, of the poor child now lying here before her soothed her sore heart.

”Jane! What an unselfish angel you are!” Mabel did not see the other's almost vehement gesture of denial. ”Of course it would be the greatest comfort to have you here!”

Then, as the girl was nervously afraid that Jane should imagine her unwilling to speak of her engagement: ”If you come here, I suppose General Lingard will leave Rede Place?”

”Yes, I suppose he will.”

Mabel looked up. It seemed to her as if her own suffering was reflected, intensified, in Jane Oglander's sad eyes.

If only she could stay on here now to-day--and not see Lingard again!

Such was Jane Oglander's thought, but she lacked the cruel courage.

Richard Maule would be hurt and angered were she thus to disappear suddenly. More, it might even make him suspect the truth--the truth as to Lingard's infatuation--of which Jane thought him ignorant.

And so, when the dusk began to fall, she got up. Athena would be annoyed if she were not back by tea-time. Athena disliked very much being alone with her husband.

”Good-bye, Mabel. You'll see me some time to-morrow.”

She hurried along the path through the trees and the bushes now stripped of leaves. She was oppressed, haunted, by the thought of Bayworth Kaye.

Could Mabel Digby's story be true? Was Athena Maule a cruel, devouring Circe, lacking mercy, honour, shame?

Jane could not think so. To believe what Mabel Digby had told her would have required a readjustment of her whole view and conception of a nature and character she had humbly admired and loved from early girlhood. Jane had always unquestioningly accepted Athena's account of the humiliations and the trials which befall beauty bereft of the care and devotion of beauty's natural protector. Mrs. Maule, so Jane believed, made an unwilling conquest of almost every man who came within her magic ring, but till now Jane had never seen the spell working....

When more than halfway to the house, she heard the sound of wheels. d.i.c.k Wantele and Hew Lingard were coming back an hour sooner than they were expected.

She was glad it was so dark--but for that they must see her. She waited till the dogcart flashed past within two or three yards of the path on which she stood.

It looked as if Wantele was urging his eager horse, already within sight of his stable, to go faster.

Jane drew further into the underwood. She saw, as if the scene were actually before her, what would happen if she continued her way on into the house.

Tea was now served in Athena's boudoir instead of in the Greek Room.