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Updated: May 18, 2025
How can you be so positive about a man you never have met? Whom you have seen only a time or two at a distance, on some street or was it a hotel lobby? in Valdez or Fairbanks?" "Yesterday, when we were talking, that was true; but since then I have seen him at close range. I've heard him." She turned and met Feversham's scrutiny with the brilliancy rising in her eyes.
Meanwhile, however, the rumours of war grew to a certainty; and when at last Feversham kept the tryst, Durrance had news. "I told you luck might look my way. Well, she has. I go out to Egypt on General Graham's staff. There's talk we may run down the Red Sea to Suakin afterward." The exhilaration of his voice brought an unmistakable envy into Feversham's eyes.
"Well," he resumed, "after Feversham had skulked for a fortnight in Berber, the negro discovered Yusef, no longer selling salt, but tending a small plantation of dhurra on the river's edge. From Yusef, Feversham obtained particulars enough to guide him to the house where the letters were concealed in the inner wall. But Yusef was no longer to be trusted. Possibly Feversham's accent betrayed him.
Apparently his candle had not helped him to any suitable expressions. He stared into the flame now instead of into Feversham's face, and for an equal length of time. He could think of nothing whatever to say, and yet he was conscious that something must be said. In the end he said lamely: "If you want any whiskey, stamp twice on the floor with your foot. The servants understand."
It seemed that he had found for himself some perfectly simple and natural explanation. At times, too, she asked herself why Durrance had told her of that meeting in Wadi Halfa, and of Feversham's subsequent departure to the south. But for that she found an explanation a strange explanation, perhaps, but it was simple enough and satisfactory to her.
And Durrance, turning over in his mind all the news and gossip which had come to him at Wadi Halfa or during his furloughs, had been brought to conjecture whether that fugitive from Khartum, who had told him his story in the glacis of the silent ruined fort of Sinkat during one drowsy afternoon of May, had not told it again at Suakin within Feversham's hearing.
His eyes already shone with pride; the three feathers for him were already taken back. The prudence was on Harry Feversham's side. "There are endless difficulties," he said. "Just to cite one: I am a civilian, these three are soldiers, surrounded by soldiers; so much the less opportunity therefore for a civilian."
It was not to be wondered at after all, he thought; there was nothing astonishing in the girl's fidelity to any one who was really acquainted with Harry Feversham, it was only an occasion of great gladness. Durrance would have to get out of the way, of course, but then he should never have crossed Harry Feversham's path. Sutch was cruel with the perfect cruelty of which love alone is capable.
He only saw again, however, that puzzling look of envy in Feversham's eyes. "You see there are worse things which can happen," he continued; "disablement, for instance. Clever men could make a shift, perhaps, to put up with it. But what in the world should I do if I had to sit in a chair all my days? It makes me shiver to think of it," and he shook his broad shoulders to unsaddle that fear.
"Never," said Powis, "within man's memory, have there been such shouts and such tears of joy as to-day." The King had that morning visited the camp on Hounslow Heath. Sunderland instantly sent a courier thither with the news. James was in Lord Feversham's tent when the express arrived. He was greatly disturbed, and exclaimed in French, "So much the worse for them." He soon set out for London.
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