ittle white jeweller's
cardboard box,--and was at once struck by its absence of weight.

"It must be empty," she said.

Yet it was most carefully sealed and tied. Feversham broke the seals and
unfastened the string. He looked at the address. The box had been
forwarded from his lodgings, and he was not familiar with the
handwriting.

"There is some mistake," he said as he shook the lid open, and then he
stopped abruptly. Three white feathers fluttered out of the box, swayed
and rocked for a moment in the air, and then, one after another, settled
gently down upon the floor. They lay like flakes of snow upon the dark
polished boards. But they were not whiter than Harry Feversham's cheeks.
He stood and stared at the feathers until he felt a light touch upon his
arm. He looked and saw Ethne's gloved hand upon his sleeve.

"What does it mean?" she asked. There was some perplexity in her voice,
but nothing more than perplexity. The smile upon her face and the loyal
confidence in her eyes showed she had never a doubt that his first word
would lift it from her. "What does it mean?"

"That there are things which cannot be hid, I suppose," said Feversham.

For a little while Ethne did not speak. The languorous music floated
into the hall, and the trees whispered from the garden through the open
door. Then she shook his arm gently, uttered a breathless little laugh,
and spoke as though she were pleading with a child.

"I don't think you understand, Harry. Here are three white feathers.
They were sent to you in jest? Oh, of course in jest. But it is a cruel
kind of jest--"

"They were sent in deadly earnest."

He spoke now, looking her straight in the eyes. Ethne dropped her hand
from his sleeve.

"Who sent them?" she asked.

Feversham had not given a thought to that matter. The message was all in
all, the men who had sent it so unimportant. But Ethne reached out her
hand and took the box from him. There were three visiting cards lying at
the bottom, and she took them out and read them aloud.

"Captain Trench, Mr. Castleton, Mr. Willoughby. Do you know these men?"

"All three are officers of my old regiment."

The girl was dazed. She knelt down upon the floor and gathered the
feathers into her hand with a vague thought that merely to touch them
would help her to comprehension. They lay upon the palm of her white
glove, and she blew gently upon them, and they swam up into the air and
hung fluttering and rocking. As t