"Very well," he said cheerily, "I won't ask you. It might hurt you to
answer, and I don't want, of course, to cause you pain."
"It's not on that account that I wish to say nothing," Ethne explained
earnestly. She paused and chose her words. "It isn't that I am afraid of
any pain. But what took place, took place such a long while ago--I look
upon Mr. Feversham as a man whom one has known well, and who is now
dead."
They were walking toward the wide gap in the line of trees upon the bank
of the creek, and as Ethne spoke she raised her eyes from the ground.
She saw that the little boat which she had noticed tacking up the creek
while she hesitated upon the terrace had run its nose into the shore.
The sail had been lowered, the little pole mast stuck up above the grass
bank of the garden, and upon the bank itself a man was standing and
staring vaguely towards the house as though not very sure of his ground.
"A stranger has landed from the creek," she said. "He looks as if he had
lost his way. I will go on and put him right."
She ran forward as she spoke, seizing upon that stranger's presence as a
means of relief, even if the relief was only to last for a minute.
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