titude of concentration showed her that. She began to
wonder whether it would be so easy after all to quiet his suspicions now
that he was blind; she began to realise that it might possibly on that
very account be all the more difficult.

"Then do you bring more than friendship?" he asked suddenly. "You will
be very honest, I know. Tell me."

Ethne was in a quandary. She knew that she must answer, and at once and
without ambiguity. In addition, she must answer honestly.

"There is nothing," she replied, and as firmly as before, "nothing in
the world which I wish for so earnestly as that you and I should marry."

It was an honest wish, and it was honestly spoken. She knew nothing of
the conversation which had passed between Harry Feversham and Lieutenant
Sutch in the grill-room of the Criterion Restaurant; she knew nothing of
Harry's plans; she had not heard of the Gordon letters recovered from
the mud-wall of a ruined house in the city of the Dervishes on the Nile
bank. Harry Feversham had, so far as she knew and meant, gone forever
completely out of her life. Therefore her wish was an honest one. But it
was not an exact answer to Durrance's question, and she hoped that again
he would listen to the intonation, rather than to the words. However, he
seemed content with it.

"Thank you, Ethne," he said, and he took her hand and shook it. His face
smiled at her. He asked no other questions. There was not a doubt, she
thought; his suspicions were quieted; he was quite content. And upon
that Mrs. Adair came with discretion into the room.

She had the tact to greet Durrance as one who suffered under no
disadvantage, and she spoke as though she had seen him only the week
before.

"I suppose Ethne has told you of our plan," she said, as she took her
tea from her friend's hand.

"No, not yet," Ethne answered.

"What plan?" asked Durrance.

"It is all arranged," said Mrs. Adair. "You will want to go home to
Guessens in Devonshire. I am your neighbour--a couple of fields separate
us, that's all. So Ethne will stay with me during the interval before
you are married."

"That's very kind of you, Mrs. Adair," Durrance exclaimed; "because, of
course, there will be an interval."

"A short one, no doubt," said Mrs. Adair.

"Well, it's this way. If there's a chance that I may recover my sight,
it would be better that I should seize it at once. Time means a good
deal in these cases."

"Then there is a chance?" cried Ethne.