Wantele stared at her coldly. "Of course you can ask one or two people," he said, and, with a slight smile, "Don't make yourself out more of a martyr than you must, Athena!" Hew Lingard, standing aside, his hand still on the handle of the door, felt an overmastering impulse to go back to the table and strike Dick Wantele's sneering face across the mouth. How awful to think, to see, that such a woman as Athena Maule, so kind, so gentle, so generous, so--so lovely and so defenceless, was subject to this young man's insolence. But he could do nothing--nothing; and Jane, amazing thought, was actually fond of Wantele! He shut the door behind his hostess and walked slowly back to the table. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Wantele broke it by speaking of Jane. It was the first time her name had passed his lips in Lingard's presence. "Since Miss Oglander lost her brother in the strange and terrible way you know," he said, "she has shrunk very much from seeing people, I mean from mixing in ordinary society. That is one reason why she has always enjoyed her visits here. The state of my cousin, Richard Maule's, health compels us to lead a very quiet life." He forced himself to go on: "Mrs. Maule, as you know, is a good deal away. She naturally does not care for the extreme dulness, the solitariness, of the life----" Lingard muttered a word of assent, but he made no other comment on the other man's words. He took them to mean that Dick Wantele felt rather ashamed of himself, as indeed he ought to do. Was it not pitifully clear that Mrs. Maule, poor beautiful Athena, had no part or place in her husband's house? All invalids tend to become self-absorbed and selfish; but he judged Wantele hardly for encouraging, nay for fostering, Mr. Maule's egoistic unkindness to his wife. Both men were glad when the time came for them to part. Dick, as always, went off to Richard, and Lingard, after a few unquiet moments in the smoking-room, made his way slowly to Athena's boudoir, the charming, restful room which, alone of the many rooms in the big quiet house, seemed to be in a real sense her territory, and where he and she had spent so many delightful hours together. But to-night he was met there with something very like a rebuff. Athena had been standing thinking, doing nothing, but when she heard Lingard's now familiar steps in the corridor she moved swiftly to her writing-table, and bent over it. As he came in she lifted her head: "I really must finish these notes," she said deprecatingly. "You see, I had hoped to soften, if not Richard's, then Dick's heart! Well, I failed, as I generally do fail with him. And I feel"--her voice quivered--"very much as poor Cinderella must have felt when the clock was about to strike twelve." As he stood, irresolute, before her, she added, "Take a book and sit down. I'll be as quick as I can." She got up with a swift movement and put a box of cigarettes and matches close to his hand.