Steadying his right hand with his left, he ate a spoonful of soup, then pushed the bowl away. The news his wife had taken such malicious pleasure in telling had disturbed and pained him more than he thought anything could now disturb and pain him. He was attached to Jane Oglander; she was the only human being apart from Dick whose presence was, if not agreeable, at least not unpleasant to him. In the rare moments of kindly thought and musing on the future which sometimes visited him, he saw Jane mistress of Rede Place, bringing peace and, what is so much nearer the heart of life, love satisfied, to Dick Wantele. He had felt sure that Jane, with her tenderness, her simplicity of nature, would end where most women of her type end, by surrender.
That she would marry anyone excepting Dick Wantele had seemed impossible. But in this life, as Richard Maule had learnt far too late, it is what would have seemed impossible which happens.
Dick Wantele and Mrs. Maule sat opposite one another at a round table set at one end of the great tapestry-hung dining-room. A stranger seeing them would have thought the plain young man singularly blessed in having so lovely a table-mate sitting with him at so perfectly cooked and noiselessly served a meal as they were now enjoying.
But though there was a side of his nature peculiarly alive to certain sensuous forms of beauty, to-night Wantele only saw in Athena the malicious, almost the malignant, bearer of ill news.
But civilized man, if eating in company, must also talk, and so at last, "One sees now," he said reflectively, "why the worthy Paches have been so greatly honoured."
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Maule. It was, she found, sometimes easier to ask Dick to explain himself than to try and guess what he meant.
"I mean," said Wantele, "that one can now understand why General Lingard accepted his dull relations' invitation. It was because he knew that his young woman would be in the neighbourhood, staying here with us."
"Your choice of phrase," said Athena sharply, "is not very refined."
"Isn't it?" he said mildly. "But then, Athena, I don't know that I ever set up to be a particularly refined person."