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Updated: June 3, 2025
Ethne unlocked a drawer in her dressing-case, and took from it the portrait which alone of all Harry Feversham's presents she had kept. She rejoiced that she had kept it. It was the portrait of some one who was dead to her that she knew very well, for there was no thought of disloyalty toward Durrance in her breast but the some one was a friend.
Ethne was in the most English of counties, the county of Plymouth and Dartmouth and Brixham and the Start, where the red cliffs of its coast-line speak perpetually of dead centuries, so that one cannot put into any harbour without some thought of the Spanish Main and of the little barques and pinnaces which adventured manfully out on their long voyages with the tide.
Ethne watched Durrance drive away with his servant to his old rooms in St. James's Street, and stood by the window after he had gone, in much the same attitude and absorption as that which had characterised her before he had come. Outside in the street the carriages were now coming back from the park, and there was just one other change. Ethne's apprehensions had taken a more definite shape.
It did not seem fair to him that another should know of it. So I rode on and kept silence." Ethne nodded her head. She could not but approve, however poignant her regret for the lost news. "So you never saw Mr. Feversham again?" "I was away nine weeks. I came back blind," he answered simply, and the very simplicity of his words went to Ethne's heart.
Every morning when Durrance was in Devonshire he would come across the fields to Ethne at The Pool, and Mrs. Adair, watching them as they talked and laughed without a shadow of embarrassment or estrangement, grew more angry, and found it more difficult to hold her peace and let the pretence go on.
"Keep still," she said in a whisper. "You know him?" "Of course. We were together for three years at Suakin. I heard that he had gone blind. I am glad to know that it is not true." This he said, noticing the freedom of Durrance's gait. "Speak lower," returned Ethne. "It is true. He is blind." "One would never have thought it. Consolations seem so futile. What can I say to him?" "Say nothing!"
It was enough, however, for Ethne Eustace. She drew a deep breath of relief, her face softened, there came a light into her grey eyes, and a smile upon her lips. "He went down into Berber," she repeated softly. "And found that the old town had been destroyed by the orders of the Emir, and that a new one was building upon its southern confines," continued Willoughby.
For the blackbirds were calling from the branches and the grass, and down beneath the overhanging trees the Lennon flowed in music between its banks. Ethne drew back from the window. She had much to do that morning before she slept. For she designed with her natural thoroughness to make an end at once of all her associations with Harry Feversham.
Captain Willoughby, who already had one leg over the bows of his boat, withdrew it with alacrity. "It's awfully good of you, Mrs. Adair," he began. "It is very kind indeed," Ethne continued, "but Captain Willoughby has reminded me that his leave is very short, and we have no right to detain him. Good-bye." Captain Willoughby gazed with a vain appeal upon Miss Eustace.
It was part of the irony of her position that she was able so much more completely to appreciate the trials which one lover of hers had undergone through the confidences which had been made to her by the other. "I will not interrupt you," said Ethne, as Willoughby took his seat beside her, and he had barely spoken a score of words before she broke that promise.
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