"
"Yes," said Mrs. Adair, "you are at a disadvantage. You no longer have
your face to screen your thoughts."
"And his eyes no longer tell me anything at all," Ethne added.
There was truth in both remarks. So long as Durrance had had Ethne's
face with its bright colour and her steady, frank, grey eyes visible
before him, he could hardly weigh her intervals of silence and her
movements against her spoken words with the detachment which was now
possible to him. On the other hand, whereas before she had never been
troubled by a doubt as to what he meant or wished, or intended, now she
was often in the dark. Durrance's blindness, in a word, had produced an
effect entirely opposite to that which might have been expected. It had
reversed their positions.
Mrs. Adair, however, was more interested in Ethne's unusual burst of
confidence. There was no doubt of it, she reflected. The girl, once
remarkable for a quiet frankness of word and look, was declining into a
creature of shifts and agitation.
"There is something, then, to be concealed from him?" she asked
quietly.
"Yes."
"Something rather important?"
"Something which at all costs I must conceal," Ethne exclaimed, and was
not sure, even while she spoke, that Durrance had not already found it
out.
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