Lingard felt a sudden feeling of recoil from the woman who sat opposite to him, watching for his answer. Then it was jealousy, pathetic but rather ignoble jealousy, that was making poor Mrs. Kaye look as she looked now—jealousy rather than grief....
There came the sound of a motor-car in the road which was above the level of the rectory garden.
It stopped, and Lingard saw through the window Wantele jump out and cross over to where Jane Oglander was walking up and down.
They spoke together for some moments, and Lingard felt a great lightening of his heart. Wantele must be telling Jane the awful thing which had happened, and he, Lingard, would be spared the dreadful task.
Jane came up close to the car. Lingard could not see the expression on her face. At last, or so it seemed to him, they both got in under the hood.
So Jane, breaking her promise to wait for him, had gone on to the house?
Making a determined effort over himself, Lingard forced himself to return to the matter—the painful, the rather absurd matter—in hand.
"I suppose you know all the circumstances," he began awkwardly.
"The circumstances, General Lingard, are perfectly simple." The fingers of Mrs. Kaye's thin right hand plucked nervously at the buttons which fastened her black woollen bodice. "The lady in question is a married woman. She got hold of my boy, and she bewitched him into forgetting the meaning of what I thought he valued more than life itself—his honour."
She rose up and stared down at Lingard, and there was a terrible look on her face.