“Captain Willoughby and I have been talking of Mr. Feversham.” At the same time she held out her hand to the captain. “Goodbye,” she said.
Mrs. Adair hastily interrupted.
“Colonel Durrance has gone home, but he dines with us tonight. I came out to tell you that, but I am glad that I came, for it gives me the opportunity to ask your friend to lunch with us if he will.”
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. Goodbye.”
Captain Willoughby gazed with a vain appeal upon Miss Eustace. He had travelled all night from London, he had made the scantiest breakfast at Kingsbridge, and the notion of lunch appealed to him particularly at that moment. But her eyes rested on his with a quiet and inexorable command. He bowed, got ruefully into his boat, and pushed off from the shore.
“It’s a little bit rough on me too, perhaps, Miss Eustace,” he said. Ethne laughed, and returned to the terrace with Mrs. Adair. Once or twice she opened the palm of her hand and disclosed to her companion’s view a small white feather, at which she laughed again, and with a clear and rather low laugh. But she gave no explanation of Captain Willoughby’s errand. Had she been in Mrs. Adair’s place she would not have expected one. It was her business and hers only.
XVII
The “Melusine Overture”
Mrs. Adair, on her side, asked for no explanations. She was naturally, behind her pale and placid countenance, a woman of a tortuous and intriguing mind. She preferred to look through a keyhole even when she could walk straight in at the door; and knowledge which could be gained by a little maneuvering was always more desirable and precious in her eyes than any information which a simple question would elicit. She avoided, indeed, the direct question on a perverted sort of principle, and she thought a day very well spent if at the close of it she had outwitted a companion into telling her spontaneously some trivial and unimportant piece of news which a straightforward request would have at once secured for her at breakfast-time.
Therefore, though she was mystified by the little white feather upon which Ethne seemed to set so much store, and wondered at the good news of Harry Feversham which Captain Willoughby had brought, and vainly puzzled her brains in conjecture as to what in the world could have happened on that night at Ramelton so many years ago, she betrayed nothing whatever of her perplexity all through lunch; on the contrary, she plied her guest with conversation upon indifferent topics. Mrs. Adair could be good company when she chose, and she chose now. But it was not to any purpose.
“I don’t believe that you hear a single word I am saying!” she exclaimed.
Ethne laughed and pleaded guilty. She betook herself to her room as soon as lunch was finished, and allowed herself an afternoon of solitude. Sitting at her window, she repeated slowly the story which Willoughby had told to her that morning, and her heart thrilled to it as to music divinely played. The regret that he had not come home and told it a year ago, when she was free, was a small thing in comparison with the story itself. It could not outweigh the great gladness which that brought to her—it had, indeed, completely vanished from her thoughts. Her pride, which had never recovered from the blow which Harry Feversham had dealt to her in the hall at Lennon House, was now quite restored, and by the man who had dealt the blow. She was aglow with it, and most grateful to Harry Feversham for that he had, at so much peril to himself, restored it. She was conscious of a new exhilaration in the sunlight, of a quicker pulsation in her blood. Her youth was given back to her upon that August afternoon.
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 someone who was dead to her—that she knew very well, for there was no thought of disloyalty toward Durrance in her breast—but the someone was a friend. She looked at it with a great happiness and contentment, because Harry Feversham had needed no expression of faith from her to inspire him, and no encouragement from her to keep him through the years on the level of his high inspiration. When she put it back again, she laid the white feather in the drawer with it and locked the two things up together.
She came back to her window. Out upon the lawn a light breeze made the shadows from the high trees dance, the sunlight mellowed and reddened. But Ethne was of her county, as Harry Feversham had long ago discovered, and her heart yearned for it at this moment. It was the month of August. The first of the heather would be out upon the hillsides of Donegal, and she wished that the good news had been brought to her there. The regret that it had not was her crumpled rose-leaf. Here she was in a strange land; there the brown mountains, with their outcroppings of granite and the voices of the streams, would have shared, she almost thought, in her new happiness. Great sorrows or great joys had this in common for Ethne Eustace—they both drew her homewards, since there endurance was more easy and gladness more complete.
She had, however, one living tie with Donegal at her side,
