There was to be no eavesdropper at the interview Mrs. Kaye intended to have with the great soldier who was coming to offer his condolences on the death of her only son.
Strange rumours had reached the rectory, or rather Mrs. Kaye, for the rector had known nothing of them—rumours which she had drunk in with cruel avidity, rumours of General Lingard's extraordinary absorption in his beautiful hostess, of the long walks and drives they took together, of the many hours they spent alone in her sitting-room.
As yet, however, not even village gossip had linked together the names of Lingard and Jane Oglander. That secret had been well kept, as are most innocent secrets.
At last the young servant announced, in a nervous, fluttered voice, "General Lingard, please, ma'am."
As Lingard walked in, as he saw the figure in deep mourning, his face relaxed and softened.
He himself came of clerical stock. His grandfather had been one of the Golden Canons of Durham, and as a child, as a youth, he had lived much in the more prosperous section of the Church of England. Often in the holidays he had accompanied relations on calls to rectories and vicarages which were as poverty-stricken, as full of self-respecting economy, as was this house. In those days all Lingard's instinct had stood up in rebellion against the clerical atmosphere in which he was being bred. But with years there came across him a queer feeling of loyalty to the cloth, to what had been his father's cloth.
Poor young Kaye! And yet most fortunate young Kaye. Such was Lingard's involuntary thought as he glanced round the homely room—for the lad whose mother stood there mourning him had known that a devoted father and mother watched with solicitude, with pride, with anxiety, every step of his career.
How different from Lingard's own case!—deprived of his parents in babyhood, and with none to care whether he did well in his profession or whether he went to the devil—as he had so very nearly gone to the devil some twenty years ago.
As he shook hands with the grey-haired woman who stood there with so tragic, so oppressed, a look on her face, there came across him the thought of his own long dead mother, and for a moment he was freed of the terrible happenings of the last few hours.
With an effort he set himself to remember all that he had heard to Bayworth Kaye's credit. Those who had mentioned him had nearly all of them alluded to his reckless bravery, to his indifference to physical danger, to his Victoria Cross....