hey floated downward she caught them
again, and so she slowly felt her way to another question.

"Were they justly sent?" she asked.

"Yes," said Harry Feversham.

He had no thought of denial or evasion. He was only aware that the
dreadful thing for so many years dreadfully anticipated had at last
befallen him. He was known for a coward. The word which had long blazed
upon the wall of his thoughts in letters of fire was now written large
in the public places. He stood as he had once stood before the portraits
of his fathers, mutely accepting condemnation. It was the girl who
denied, as she still kneeled upon the floor.

"I do not believe that is true," she said. "You could not look me in the
face so steadily were it true. Your eyes would seek the floor, not
mine."

"Yet it is true."

"Three little white feathers," she said slowly; and then, with a sob in
her throat, "This afternoon we were under the elms down by the Lennon
River--do you remember, Harry?--just you and I. And then come three
little white feathers, and the world's at an end."

"Oh, don't!" cried Harry, and his voice broke upon the word. Up till now
he had spoken with a steadiness matching the steadiness of his eyes. But
these last words of hers, the picture which they evoked in his memories,
the pathetic simplicity of her utterance, caught him by the heart. But
Ethne seemed not to hear the appeal. She was listening with her face
turned toward the ballroom. The chatter and laughter of the voices there
grew louder and nearer. She understood that the music had ceased. She
rose quickly to her feet, clenching the feathers in her hand, and opened
a door. It was the door of her sitting room.

"Come," she said.

Harry followed her into the room, and she closed the door, shutting out
the noise.

"Now," she said, "will you tell me, if you please, why the feathers have
been sent?"

She stood quietly before him; her face was pale, but Feversham could not
gather from her expression any feeling which she might have beyond a
desire and a determination to get at the truth. She spoke, too, with the
same quietude. He answered, as he had answered before, directly and to
the point, without any attempt at mitigation.

"A telegram came. It was sent by Castleton. It reached me when Captain
Trench and Mr. Willoughby were dining with me. It told me that my
regiment would be ordered on active service in Egypt. Castleton was
dining with a man likely to know, and I di