Instead he looked across to Wantele: "I wonder if you remember that curious phrase of George Herbert? 'There is an hour wherein a man might be happy all his life could he but find it—'"
Athena had stared at Lingard—what did he mean by saying such an odd thing?
Then she had reminded Dick that the last time Jane had been coming to Rede Place she had changed her mind not once but three times, and what Athena said had irritated Wantele the more because she spoke the truth.
Jane was curiously uncertain and casual—women of her temperament often are. She only made an effort to be mindful of her engagements when dealing with those concerning whom most people would have said punctuality did not matter—with those forlorn men and women adrift on the dark sea of South London, to whose service she had given herself since her brother's death.
For a moment he, Dick Wantele, and Hew Lingard, had been in that wordless sympathy which between men means friendship. Wantele was eager to be convinced that his suspicions were both base and baseless. If only Athena would remove her disturbing presence from Rede Place! But he knew her too well to hope that she would go—yet.
Here was the train at last, but where was Jane Oglander? Dick looked before and behind him. No, she was not there. She hadn't come after all. She had, as usual, changed her plans at the last moment. Athena was right, Jane was really too casual! When he reached home he would find a telegram from her explaining——
And then suddenly he saw her walking towards him from the extreme end of the platform. And the mere sight of her dispelled, not only the irritation of which he was now ashamed, but the anxieties, the suspicions of the last ten days.
He had vaguely supposed that Jane would look unlike herself, that the fact that she was going to be Lingard's wife would have produced in her some outward change. But she looked as she always looked—set apart from the women about her, especially from those of her own age, by the greater simplicity, the almost austerity of her dress. An old cottage woman had once said to Wantele, "Grey is Miss Oglander's colour, and if she was 'appy perhaps light blue."
And as she came up to him, smiling, he remembered what the old woman had said, for Miss Oglander was wearing a long grey cloak; it was open at the neck, and showed some kind of white vest with a touch of blue underneath. On her fair hair, framing her face, rested a Quakerish little cap-like hat with strings tied under her soft chin.