"It's evident we can't hope to keep the hero all to ourselves. It's lucky Jane Oglander isn't here! I thought it such a pity yesterday, but now I'm glad. We may be able to ask a few people over before she arrives—when she's here, Lingard won't want a crowd about. We might begin with the Sumners—you see they ask themselves, it's very good of them, for to-morrow!" he laughed outright, a thin, satirical and yet again not an unkindly laugh.
Dick had never seen his cousin so animated, so interested, in a word, so amused, for years. He was rather surprised.
"It'll be an awful bore," he said slowly, "and Richard—are you sure that you wish it? I think I could manage to put off most of these people—I mean without giving offence."
"No, no, Dick! I know it'll give you a certain amount of trouble"—the older man looked attentively at the younger—"but I've felt lately that we didn't see enough people. I don't see why my state and Athena's selfishness"—he uttered the word very deliberately—"should force you to live such an unnatural life as you've now been leading for so long——" He waited a moment and then said, more lightly, "I'm afraid that we both, you and I, have grown to believe that Jane Oglander's the only young woman in the world."
Wantele gave him a swift look.
"She's the only woman in the world for me," he muttered. "Lingard may be a good fellow, Richard, but I wish—I would give a good deal to know what Jane sees in him." He also was trying to speak lightly.
"Ah, one always feels that!" Richard Maule lay back in his chair. The short discussion had tired him. "Then will you see about it all, Dick?"
"Yes," cried Wantele hastily, "of course I will! I agree that we've been too much shut up."
He went back to Athena, and this time she welcomed him graciously. She also had received letters asking for a peep of their hero.
Wantele looked at his cousin's wife with reluctant admiration. He had not seen her looking as animated, as radiant as—as seductive as she looked now for a very long time.