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He handed them both to her, since she asked for them, and she clasped them, and with a smile treasured them against her breast. "I have the four feathers now," she said. "Yes," answered Feversham; "all four. What will you do with them?" Ethne's smile became a laugh. "Do with them!" she cried in scorn. "I shall do nothing with them. I shall keep them. I am very proud to have them to keep."
But his weapons began to talk over loudly in his ears, even as Ethne's violin, in the earlier days after Harry Feversham was gone and she was left alone, had spoken with too penetrating a note to her. As he handled the locks, and was aware that he could no longer see the sights, the sum of his losses was presented to him in a very definite and incontestable way.
For Ethne's proposal that they should separate he was not unprepared. He had heard already that she was engaged, and he did not argue against her wish. But he understood that she had more to say to him. And she had. But she was slow to speak it. This was the last time she was to see Harry Feversham; she meant resolutely to send him away.
For one thing she recognised quite surely: Durrance saw ever so much more clearly now that he was blind. During the months of July and August Ethne's apprehensions grew, and once at all events they found expression on her lips. "I am afraid," she said, one morning, as she stood in the sunlight at an open window of Mrs. Adair's house upon a creek of the Salcombe estuary. In the room behind her Mrs.
It had told of great joys, quite unattainable, and of great griefs too, eternal, and with a sort of nobility by reason of their greatness; and of many unformulated longings beyond the reach of words; but with never a single note of mere complaint. So it had seemed to Durrance that night as he had sat listening while Ethne's face was turned away.
Instantly my eyes turned to Ethne's throat, and there I saw deep, horrible marks, like the marks of a tiger's fangs; but, thank God, they had not penetrated far enough to do any serious injury! My uncle's shot had come just in time to save her. "Merely fainted, hasn't she?" he asked anxiously. I nodded. My relief at finding this was so, was too great for words. "Heaven be praised!"
"Feversham imprisoned at Omdurman." Durrance, with one of the new instincts of delicacy which had been born in him lately by reason of his sufferings and the habit of thought, had moved away from Ethne's side as soon as he had given it to her, and had joined Mrs. Adair, who was reading a book in the drawing-room.
"I thought so," she said, but in so low a voice that the words barely reached Ethne's ears. They did not penetrate to her mind, for as she looked across the stone-flagged terrace and down the broad shallow flight of steps to the lawn, she asked abruptly: "Do you think he has any hope whatever that he will recover his sight?" The question had not occurred to Mrs.
"Yes, it was an illusion," she cried. "I understand. I might have understood a long while since, but I would not. When those feathers came he told me why they were sent, quite simply, with his eyes on mine. When my father knew of them, he waited quite steadily and faced my father." There was other evidence of the like kind not within Ethne's knowledge.
Again Durrance called "Ethne," but now in a louder voice, and a voice of doubt. "Do you hear? He is not sure," whispered Ethne. "Keep very still." "Why?" "He must not know you are here," and lest Willoughby should move, she caught his arm tight in her hand. Willoughby did not pursue his inquiries. Ethne's manner constrained him to silence.
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