He thought he could reconstitute the events of the last three days. No doubt Richard had insisted on Jane's lover being asked over to stay, and Athena, as was her way, had resented the trouble of entertaining Richard's guest.
Mrs. Maule had no liking for a man on half terms. With her it must be all or nothing—too often it was all that she received; seldom, as in this case—nothing. Wantele felt a malicious pleasure in the knowledge that for once Athena's spells would be powerless, that in this unique instance there was stretched before her a gateless barrier. Hew Lingard was the lover of her friend, and Athena, so Wantele acknowledged, loved Jane Oglander with whatever truth was in her.
Such were his disconnected thoughts as he walked silently by the other's side. Yes, Lingard seemed strangely unlike the man who had dined there a week ago. Dick Wantele possessed an almost feminine power of observation, of intuition. He would have been a happier man had he lacked it.
"I must go and find my cousin," he said at last. "I haven't seen him yet. But he won't keep me long."
"Please don't trouble about me. I've a lot of letters to write. Mrs. Maule has been good enough to give me a sitting-room."
Lingard spoke with a touch of rather curt impatience. He had no wish to be entertained by this odd, idle young man. Mr. Maule's heir did not attract him; Dick Wantele took too much upon himself.
Lingard was already on excellent terms with his host—his poor, feeble, afflicted host. As for Mrs. Maule—he thought of her as Athena, had she not already asked him to call her Athena?—she was, if only as Jane Oglander's intimate friend, already set apart on a pedestal. And then Athena had said a word—only a word—of the painful position she occupied in her husband's house, that of an occasional and not very welcome guest. It had made Lingard seethe with unspoken, but the more deeply felt, indignation.
There is something moving, to a generous masculine mind something very pathetic, in the sight of a beautiful woman hardly used by fate. Lingard already suspected that in this case Dick Wantele played the ugly part of fate. True, Jane seemed very fond of the young man, and he had been good to her in the terrible affair of her brother; but the taste of women in the matter of men is not always to be trusted.
General Lingard, in spite of the qualities which made him a successful leader of fighting men, had not troubled himself, indeed he had not had the time, to probe or question certain accepted axioms.
As the two came into the hall, Lingard stepped aside and took up the heavy mail bag.