"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?