"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 did not question the accuracy of
his message. He told me to tell Trench. I did not. I thought the matter
over with the telegram in front of me. Castleton was leaving that night
for Scotland, and he would go straight from Scotland to rejoin the
regiment. He would not, therefore, see Trench for some weeks at the
earliest, and by that time the telegram would very likely be forgotten
or its date confused. I did not tell Trench. I threw the telegram into
the fire, and that night sent in my papers. But Trench found out
somehow.
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