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. To Jane Oglander it was as if another entity had entered Hew Lingard's bodily shape--the bodily shape that was alas! so terribly dear to her. Lingard was not unkind, he was ever careful of her comfort in all little ways, but when they were alone together--and this happened strangely seldom--he would fall into long silences, as if unaware that she, his love, was there. From these abstracted moods Jane soon learnt that she could rouse him only in one way. He was ever ready to talk of Athena,--of their noble, lovely, and ill-used friend; and Jane, assenting, would tell herself that it was all true, and that only long familiarity with the strange conditions of existence at Rede Place had made her take as calmly as she did the tragedy of Athena Maule's life--that tragedy which now weighed so heavily on Lingard that it blotted out for him everything and everybody else. "I have told her she can always come and stay with us when things get intolerable here," he had exclaimed during one such talk, looking at Jane with eager, ardent eyes; and she had bent her head. Then it was with Athena he discussed their future, his and Jane's--the future in which Mrs. Maule was, it seemed, to have so great a share. * * * * * It was on the seventh day of Jane's stay at Rede Place that her lover for the first time, or so it seemed to her sore heart, sought her company. It fell about in this wise. Athena had been caught by Mrs. Pache, who, taking a drive in her old safe brougham for the first time since the motor accident, had naturally chosen Rede Place. Lingard and Dick Wantele at last escaped, leaving Mrs. Maule prisoned by her guest. They had gone out of doors, and chance had led them across Jane--Jane on her way back from the Small Farm where Mabel Digby, for the first time in her young life, lay ill in bed, unwilling to see anyone, excepting Jane. On hearing who had called, Miss Oglander had wished to hurry in, but Lingard had cried imperiously, "No! you shan't be made to endure Cousin Annie's congratulations! Come instead for a walk with me!" He had said the words in his old voice--the voice Jane knew, loved, obeyed. Dick Wantele looked quickly at them both. Was it possible that Lingard was working himself free of the fetters of which he was--Dick wished to think it possible--still unaware? "Take him to the Oakhanger," he said to Jane. "You can get there and back in an hour----" Side by side they hastened, walking not as lovers walk, but as do those who feel themselves to be escaping from some danger which lies close behind them. Jane was taking Lingard the shortest way out of the park.