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 some one who was
dead to her--that she knew very well, for there was no thought of
disloyalty toward Durrance in her breast--but the some one 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, for Dermod's
old collie dog had become her inseparable companion. To him she made her
confidence, and if at times her voice broke in tears, why, the dog would
not tell. She came to understand much which Willoughby had om