to him, and that she was
stubbornly determined he should not do. She was bound to him in honour,
and it would be a poor way of manifesting her joy that Harry Feversham
had redeemed his honour if she straightway sacrificed her own.

Captain Willoughby pursed up his lips and whistled.

"Engaged to Jack Durrance!" he exclaimed. "Then I seem to have wasted my
time in bringing you that feather," and he pointed towards it. She was
holding it in her open hand, and she drew her hand sharply away, as
though she feared for a moment that he meant to rob her of it.

"I am most grateful for it," she returned.

"It's a bit of a muddle, isn't it?" Willoughby remarked. "It seems a
little rough on Feversham perhaps. It's a little rough on Jack Durrance,
too, when you come to think of it." Then he looked at Ethne. He noticed
her careful handling of the feather; he remembered something of the
glowing look with which she had listened to his story, something of the
eager tones in which she had put her questions; and he added, "I
shouldn't wonder if it was rather rough on you too, Miss Eustace."

Ethne did not answer him, and they walked together out of the enclosure
towards the spot where Willoughby had moored his boat. She hurried him
down the bank to the water's edge, intent that he should sail away
unperceived.

But Ethne had counted without Mrs. Adair, who all that morning had seen
much in Ethne's movements to interest her. From the drawing-room window
she had watched Ethne and Durrance meet at the foot of the
terrace-steps, she had seen them walk together towards the estuary, she
had noticed Willoughby's boat as it ran aground in the wide gap between
the trees, she had seen a man disembark, and Ethne go forward to meet
him. Mrs. Adair was not the woman to leave her post of observation at
such a moment, and from the cover of the curtains she continued to watch
with all the curiosity of a woman in a village who draws down the blind,
that unobserved she may get a better peep at the stranger passing down
the street. Ethne and the man from the boat turned away and disappeared
amongst the trees, leaving Durrance forgotten and alone. Mrs. Adair
thought at once of that enclosure at the water's edge. The conversation
lasted for some while, and since the couple did not promptly reappear, a
question flashed into her mind. "Could the stranger be Harry Feversham?"
Ethne had no friends in this part of the world. The question pressed
upon Mrs.