"Miss Oglander? I think she's upstairs with Miss Digby, sir. But I'll fetch her down. Will you come into the drawing-room?"
Lingard went through the hall into the long sitting-room which he remembered, as men remember a place to which they have been in dreams. Jane had brought him there on the first morning after her arrival at Rede Place. They had not had a very pleasant walk, for each seemed to have so curiously little to say to the other, and Lingard, at least, had hailed with pleasure the moment when they had gone into the house.
He remembered that he had been amused and touched by the many mementoes of the Indian Mutiny the room contained--quaint coloured prints and amateurish drawings of Delhi, before and during the great epic struggle, curious engraved portraits of the various Mutiny veterans under whom Mabel Digby's father had fought,--signs of a hero-worship the old soldier had transmitted to his daughter.
He also recalled the feeling of acute irritation with which he had noticed Mabel Digby's look of shy congratulation at Jane and at himself. She had been at once too shy and too well-bred to make any allusion to an engagement which was not yet announced, but there had been no mistaking her glance, her smile.
How long ago all that seemed! It might have been years--instead of only weeks.
He went and stood by the fireplace, and then stared up at Outram's portrait. Was that man, and were that man's comrades and contemporaries, whose virtues as well as whose courage have become famous as the virtues and the courage of ancient legendary heroes--were they untouched by the failings and weaknesses of our poor common humanity? It was certainly not true of their own immediate predecessors, or--or of their successors.
A click of the latch--and Jane came into the room. She was pale, but her manner had regained its old quietude and gentleness.
As she came towards him and saw his ravaged face, a feeling of great concern, of pity so maternal in texture that it swept away every other feeling from her heart, almost broke down her new, unnatural composure.
She wished ardently--and Jane was full of hidden fire--to make everything easy for him. But oh! she could not bear him to look as he now looked.