Jane was ailing, and each day she fought with the knowledge of what ailed her as certain strong natures fight, and even for a while keep at bay, physical disease.
But there came a moment when she had to face the truth; when she had to tell herself that the new, the agonising pain which racked her soul night and day, leaving her no moment of peace, was that base passion, jealousy.
It was horrible to feel that it was of Athena she was jealous—Athena who seemed to be always there, between Lingard and herself. She could not think so ill of her friend as to suppose that this was Mrs. Maule's fault; still less would she accuse Lingard.
Gradually the knowledge had come to her that when they three were together—Athena, Jane, and Lingard—it was as if she, Jane, was not, so entirely was Lingard absorbed in, possessed by, Athena.
Jane Oglander could not fight with the weapons another woman in her place might have used. She could not, that is, make the most of such odd moments, of such scanty opportunities as she might have snatched from Athena Maule. How could the trifling events which made up the sum of five or six days have brought about such a change?
She had thought to be so happy at Rede Place. She had come there filled with a sense of tremulous and yet certain gladness; in the mood to be sought by, rather than in that which seeks, the beloved. Athena, Richard, and Dick, if they did not love each other, surely each loved her sufficiently to understand, to respect her joy.
The circumstances of her brother's death which had fallen like a pall on her young life had set Jane Oglander apart from happy, normal women. To her the world had only contained one lover—Hew Lingard; and those days they had spent together in a peopled solitude had taught her all she knew of the ways of love.
It was instinct which had made her shrink, that first night of her stay at Rede Place, from Athena's insistent questioning; natural delicacy which had made her refuse, almost with disgust, the suggestion that she and Lingard should be set apart in an artificial solitude. As yet their engagement was secret from the world which seemed to take so great, so—so impertinent an interest in Hew Lingard, and she wished to keep it so as long as possible.
Then there was another reason, one which she now told herself Athena should have divined, why Jane wished little notice to be taken of her engagement. She had no wish to flaunt her happiness before Dick Wantele.
But now there was no happiness to flaunt—in its place only a dumb misery and a jealousy of which she felt an agonising shame.