urrance only noticed
that she was dressed in black. She understood the question in his mind
and answered it.

"My husband died eighteen months ago," she explained in a quiet voice.
"He was thrown from his horse during a run with the Pytchley. He was
killed at once."

"I had not heard," Durrance answered awkwardly. "I am very sorry."

Mrs. Adair took a chair beside him and did not reply. She was a woman of
perplexing silences; and her pale and placid face, with its cold correct
outline, gave no clue to the thoughts with which she occupied them. She
sat without stirring. Durrance was embarrassed. He remembered Mr. Adair
as a good-humoured man, whose one chief quality was his evident
affection for his wife, but with what eyes the wife had looked upon him
he had never up till now considered. Mr. Adair indeed had been at the
best a shadowy figure in that small household, and Durrance found it
difficult even to draw upon his recollections for any full expression of
regret. He gave up the attempt and asked:--

"Are Harry Feversham and his wife in town?"

Mrs. Adair was slow to reply.

"Not yet," she said, after a pause, but immediately she corrected
herself, and said a little hurriedly, "I mean--the marriage never took
place."

Durrance was not a man easily startled, and even when he was, his
surprise was not expressed in exclamations.

"I don't think that I understand. Why did it never take place?" he
asked. Mrs. Adair looked sharply at him, as though inquiring for the
reason of his deliberate tones.

"I don't know why," she said. "Ethne can keep a secret if she wishes,"
and Durrance nodded his assent. "The marriage was broken off on the
night of a dance at Lennon House."

Durrance turned at once to her.

"Just before I left England three years ago?"

"Yes. Then you knew?"

"No. Only you have explained to me something which occurred on the very
night that I left Dover. What has become of Harry?"

Mrs. Adair shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not know. I have met no one who does know. I do not think that I
have met any one who has even seen him since that time. He must have
left England."

Durrance pondered on this mysterious disappearance. It was Harry
Feversham, then, whom he had seen upon the pier as the Channel boat cast
off. The man with the troubled and despairing face was, after all, his
friend.

"And Miss Eustace?" he asked after a pause, with a queer timidity. "She
has married since?"

Again Mrs.