"
"Harry Feversham is my friend."
"General Feversham is his father, yet he knows only half the truth. Miss
Eustace was betrothed to him, and she knows no more. I pledged my word
to Harry that I would keep silence."
"It is not curiosity which makes me ask."
"I am sure that, on the contrary, it is friendship," said the
lieutenant, cordially.
"Nor that entirely. There is another aspect of the matter. I will not
ask you to answer my questions, but I will put a third one to you. It is
one harder for me to ask than for you to answer. Would a friend of Harry
Feversham be at all disloyal to that friendship, if"--and Durrance
flushed beneath his sunburn--"if he tried his luck with Miss Eustace?"
The question startled Lieutenant Sutch.
"You?" he exclaimed, and he stood considering Durrance, remembering the
rapidity of his promotion, speculating upon his likelihood to take a
woman's fancy. Here was an aspect of the case, indeed, to which he had
not given a thought, and he was no less troubled than startled. For
there had grown up within him a jealousy on behalf of Harry Feversham as
strong as a mother's for a favourite second son. He had nursed with a
most pleasurable anticipation a hope that, in the end, Harry would come
back to all that he once had owned, like a rethroned king.
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