She moved a little nearer to where he and Athena were standing. Again she said her lover's name; but this time she uttered it in so low, so faltering a tone that Lingard might indeed have been excused for not hearing it. She waited a moment for the answer that did not come, and then she turned and walked slowly away, down to and through the arch in the wall. To Wantele, witness of the little scene, what had just happened seemed full of a profound and sinister significance. As he had heard Jane Oglander utter Lingard's name, he had told himself that he would have heard her voice--had it been calling "Dick"--across the world. But Lingard was deaf to everything, to everybody, but Athena. He had become her thrall. With a last muttered word of instruction to the gardener, Wantele turned and hurried out of the orchard. He glanced anxiously down each of the straight walks, and peered through the leafless fruit-trees. It was clear that Jane had already passed out of the walled gardens, and that she had taken the shortest way of escape. He started in pursuit, his one desire being--in some ways Wantele was very like a woman in his dealings with his beloved--to assuage her pain, to lighten her humiliation.... Suddenly he saw her. She was standing on a little pier which jutted rather far out into the lake. Her slight figure was reflected into the water, now dotted with yellow leaves, and she was staring down into the blue, golden-flecked depths. Wantele felt afraid to call out, so perilously near was she to the unguarded edge. He began walking quickly along the path which, circling round the oval piece of water, led to the pier, and Jane, looking up, became aware that he was there. Without speaking, she turned and made her way along the rough boards. Nothing was changed since yesterday, since this morning, and yet in a sense Wantele felt that everything was changed. Till now he had been doubtful as to what she knew--almost of what there was to know. He distrusted, with reason, his sharp, intolerable jealousy of Lingard. He had spent a miserable hour after he had himself speeded the two to the Oakhanger. There are no relations so difficult to probe as the relations of lovers--even of those who have been and are no longer lovers. Jane put out her hand as if they had not met before that day, and Dick took the poor cold hand in his and held it tightly for a moment before he dropped it. "D'you know what to-day is?" she asked abruptly. "I hadn't meant to remind you of it, Dick--dear, kind Dick. To-day is the twenty-fifth of October, the day my brother died." He uttered an exclamation of dismay, self-rebuke. How could he have forgotten? So well had he remembered the date last year that he had written and urged Jane to come to Rede Place, and on her refusal to do so he had gone up to London for two or three days; together they had made the long, the interminable, journey to the suburban churchyard where Jack Oglander had been buried.