"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 attitude, 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 asset 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.