thought of
Willoughby's message. This morning she had regained him, and this
evening the bad news had come and she had lost him, and most likely
right to the very end of mortal life. Harry Feversham meant to pay for
his fault to the uttermost scruple, and Ethne cried out against his
thoroughness, which he had learned from no other than herself. "Surely,"
she thought, "he might have been content. In redeeming his honour in the
eyes of one of the three he has done enough, he has redeemed it in the
eyes of all."

But he had gone south to join Colonel Trench in Omdurman. Of that
squalid and shadowless town, of its hideous barbarities, of the horrors
of its prison-house, Ethne knew nothing at all. But Captain Willoughby
had hinted enough to fill her imagination with terrors. He had offered
to explain to her what captivity in Omdurman implied, and she wrung her
hands, as she remembered that she had refused to listen. What cruelties
might not be practised? Even now, at that very hour perhaps, on this
night of summer--but she dared not let her thoughts wander that way....

The lapping of the tide against the banks was like the music of a river.
It brought to Ethne's mind one particular river which had sung and
babbled in her ears when five years ago she had watched out another
summer night till dawn. Never had she so hungered for her own country
and the companionship of its brown hills and streams. No, not even this
afternoon, when she had sat at her window and watched the lights change
upon the creek. Donegal had a sanctity for her, it seemed when she
dwelled in it to set her in a way apart from and above earthly taints;
and as her heart went out in a great longing towards it now, a sudden
fierce loathing for the concealments, the shifts and maneuvers which
she had practised, and still must practise, sprang up within her. A
great weariness came upon her, too. But she did not change from her
fixed resolve. Two lives were not to be spoilt because she lived in the
world. To-morrow she could gather up her strength and begin again. For
Durrance must never know that there was another whom she placed before
him in her thoughts. Meanwhile, however, Durrance within the
drawing-room brought his confession to an end.

"So you see," he said, "I could not speak of Harry Feversham until
to-night. For I was afraid that what I had to tell you would hurt you
very much. I was afraid that you still remembered him, in spite of those
five year