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. Dick 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. There the four of them, Jane, Athena, and the two men, came together each afternoon. Dick never stayed long. After a few minutes he would go to Richard, leaving the others—a strange unnatural trio,—till Jane also escaped, sometimes to sit with her host, oftener to some place where she could be alone.
This was what happened every day; and now she suddenly made up her mind that it should never happen again. It was her heart, her mind, which was sick and tired, not her body. It would do her good to go on walking till the time came when she could creep quietly into the house and go up to her room. Athena and Hew would think, if they thought of her at all, that she had stayed on for tea with Mabel Digby....
All at once, out of the darkness, she heard a familiar voice: "Hullo, Jane! You've managed to travel a good way in ten minutes. I don't think it is ten minutes since we drove by. I thought I'd lost you!"
It was Dick Wantele, a little breathless, a little excited by the chase.
"Then you saw I was there?"