A man not
very clever, as he himself was ever the first to acknowledge, and always
the inheritor of the other places,--how much more it meant to him than
to the ordinary run of men! Would the girl, he wondered, understand as
clearly? It was very silent that morning on the verandah at Wadi Halfa;
the sunlight blazed upon desert and river; not a breath of wind stirred
the foliage of any bush. Calder drank his brandy-and-soda, and slowly
that question forced itself more and more into the front of his mind.
Would the woman over in Ireland understand? He rose from his chair as he
heard Colonel Dawson's voice in the mess-room, and taking up his letter,
walked away to the post-office. Durrance's letter was despatched, but
somewhere in the Mediterranean it crossed a letter from Ethne, which
Durrance received a fortnight later at Cairo. It was read out to him by
Calder, who had obtained leave to come down from Wadi Halfa with his
friend. Ethne wrote that she had, during the last months, considered all
that he had said when at Glenalla and in London; she had read, too, his
letters and understood that in his thoughts of her there had been no
change, and that there would be none; she therefore went back upon her
old argument that she would, by marriage, be doing him an injury, and
she would marry him upon his return to England.
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