"Have you been told," she asked, "about Bayworth Kaye? He's at Aden, it seems, and seriously ill. They think it's typhoid. His parents only heard yesterday. They're awfully worried about him. Mrs. Kaye can't make up her mind whether she ought to go out to him or not."
And then, as he turned to her, startled, genuinely sorry, he saw a look on her young face he had never seen there before; it was a terrible expression—one of aversion and of passionate contempt.
Mrs. Maule and General Lingard were walking together, pacing slowly side by side. Though a turn of the path brought them very near, Lingard was so absorbed in what Athena was saying that he did not see Wantele and Miss Digby. But Athena saw them, and with a quick, skilful movement she guided her own and her companion's steps in a direction that made it impossible for the four to meet.
Mabel Digby remained silent for some moments, and then she turned abruptly to Wantele.
"Why isn't Jane Oglander here?" she asked. "I thought you expected her last week. Her friend must be a very selfish woman!"
"I don't think Jane would care for the sort of thing we had to-day," Wantele said reflectively. Why had Mabel looked at Athena with so strange—so—so contemptuous a look? "Still, she'll have to get used to seeing him lionized."
"Write and ask her to come as soon as she can, Dick. It's—it's stupid of her to stay away like that!"
Wantele glanced round at the speaker; and then, to his concern and surprise, he saw that her face was flushed, her brown eyes soft with tears. "I was thinking of Bayworth," she faltered. "He looked so dreadfully unhappy when he went away, Dick, and—and I can't help knowing why."
The hours and the days wore themselves away quickly—all too quickly for Athena Maule and Hew Lingard, slowly and full of acute discomfort and suspicion for Dick Wantele.
Occasionally the young man tried to tell himself that perhaps the real reason of his discontent was their guest's attitude to himself. It was clear that the famous soldier did not like the younger of his hosts, in fact he hardly made any attempt to conceal his prejudice, and the two men, though of course forced into a kind of intimacy, saw as little as they could of one another.