Ethne descended the steps and advanced to meet him. She
walked slowly, as if to a difficult encounter.
But there was another who only waited an opportunity to engage in it
with eagerness. For as Ethne descended the steps Mrs. Adair suddenly
dropped the book which she had pretended to resume and ran towards the
window. Hidden by the drapery of the curtain she looked out and watched.
The smile was still upon her lips, but a fierce light had brightened in
her eyes, and her face had the drawn look of hunger.
"Something which at all costs she must conceal," she said to herself,
and she said it in a voice of exultation. There was contempt too in her
tone, contempt for Ethne Eustace, the woman of the open air who was
afraid, who shrank from marriage with a blind man, and dreaded the
restraint upon her freedom. It was that shrinking which Ethne had to
conceal--Mrs. Adair had no doubt of it. "For my part, I am glad," she
said, and she was--fiercely glad that blindness had disabled Durrance.
For if her opportunity ever came, as it seemed to her now more and more
likely to come, blindness reserved him to her, as no man was ever
reserved to any woman. So jealous was she of his every word and look
that his dependence upon her would be the extreme of pleasure.
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