"I've just had a letter from Jane Oglander."
The younger of the two men wondered with a certain lazy amusement whether Athena was aware of how dramatic had been her announcement of a singularly insignificant fact. As to the older man--he who sat by the fireplace--he had turned and deliberately looked away as the door opened. But now it was he who spoke, and this to Dick Wantele was significant, for Richard Maule very seldom spoke of his own accord, to his wife.
"Then isn't she coming to-morrow? It seems a long time since Jane left us--in August, wasn't it?"
"Jane Oglander," said Mrs. Maule, her left hand playing with the tassel terminating the Algerian scarf which slipped below her bare dimpled shoulders, "Jane Oglander wishes me to tell you both that--that she is going to be married."
Richard Maule fixed his stern, sunken eyes on his wife. It was a terrible look--a look of mingled contempt and hatred.
"Anyone we know?" asked Dick Wantele quietly.
Athena Maule looked at him with a grudging admiration. Dick was certainly what some of her English friends called "game," and her French friends "_crâne_." She had now lived in England for some eight years, but she did not yet understand Englishmen and their ways; and of all the strange Englishmen she had come across, there were few that struck her as so queer--queer was the word--as her husband's cousin, Dick Wantele. But he had long ceased really to interest her.
Walking slowly down the long gallery upstairs, Mrs. Maule had thought deeply how she should make her startling announcement, how reveal the news which had hurt her so shrewdly as to make her wish--such being her nature--that others should share her pain.
She had thought of coming in with Jane Oglander's letter open in her hand, but no, this she decided would be rather cheap, and would also in a measure prepare Dick--it was Dick whom she wished to hurt, whom she knew she would hurt. Richard Maule was incapable of being hurt by anything. But still it was very pleasant to know that even Richard would be irritated at the thought that Jane Oglander, who had now been for so long the one healing, soothing presence in their sombre household, and whom he had stupidly believed would end by marrying Dick Wantele was now going to disappear into the morass of British matronhood.