She
watched Ethne and Durrance meet on the lawn at the foot of the terrace
steps. She saw them turn and walk side by side across the grass towards
the creek. She noticed that Ethne seemed to plead, and in her heart she
longed to overhear.
And Ethne was pleading.
"You saw your oculist yesterday?" she asked quickly, as soon as they
met. "Well, what did he say?"
Durrance shrugged his shoulders.
"That one must wait. Only time can show whether a cure is possible or
not," he answered, and Ethne bent forward a little and scrutinised his
face as though she doubted that he spoke the truth.
"But must you and I wait?" she asked.
"Surely," he returned. "It would be wiser on all counts." And thereupon
he asked her suddenly a question of which she did not see the drift. "It
was Mrs. Adair, I imagine, who proposed this plan that I should come
home to Guessens and that you should stay with her here across the
fields?"
Ethne was puzzled by the question, but she answered it directly and
truthfully. "I was in great distress when I heard of your accident. I
was so distressed that at the first I could not think what to do. I came
to London and told Laura, since she is my friend, and this was her plan.
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