ns.

"These, too, are yours. Will you take them, please?"

She was pointing with her fan to the feathers upon the table. Feversham
obediently reached out his hand, and then drew it back in surprise.

"There are four," he said.

Ethne did not reply, and looking at her fan Feversham understood. It was
a fan of ivory and white feathers. She had broken off one of those
feathers and added it on her own account to the three.

The thing which she had done was cruel, no doubt. But she wished to make
an end--a complete, irrevocable end; though her voice was steady and her
face, despite its pallor, calm, she was really tortured with humiliation
and pain. All the details of Harry Feversham's courtship, the
interchange of looks, the letters she had written and received, the
words which had been spoken, tingled and smarted unbearably in her
recollections. Their lips had touched--she recalled it with horror. She
desired never to see Harry Feversham after this night. Therefore she
added her fourth feather to the three.

Harry Feversham took the feathers as she bade him, without a word of
remonstrance, and indeed with a sort of dignity which even at that
moment surprised her. All the time, too, he had kept his eyes steadily
upon hers, he had answered her questions simply, there had been nothing
abject in his manner; so that Ethne already began to regret this last
thing which she had done. However, it _was_ done. Feversham had taken
the four feathers.

He held them in his fingers as though he was about to tear them across.
But he checked the action. He looked suddenly towards her, and kept his
eyes upon her face for some little while. Then very carefully he put the
feathers into his breast pocket. Ethne at this time did not consider
why. She only thought that here was the irrevocable end.

"We should be going back, I think," she said. "We have been some time
away. Will you give me your arm?" In the hall she looked at the clock.
"Only eleven o'clock," she said wearily. "When we dance here, we dance
till daylight. We must show brave faces until daylight."

And with her hand resting upon his arm, they passed into the ballroom.

CHAPTER V

THE PARIAH

Habit assisted them; the irresponsible chatter of the ballroom sprang
automatically to their lips; the appearance of enjoyment never failed
from off their faces; so that no one at Lennon House that night
suspected that any swift cause of severance had come between them. H