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 they 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.
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