It was just a throb of the heart
made vocal. It startled Ethne as much as it surprised Captain
Willoughby. She had schooled herself to omit Harry Feversham from her
thoughts, and to obliterate him from her affections, and the cry showed
to her how incompletely she had succeeded. Only a few minutes since she
had spoken of him as one whom she looked upon as dead, and she had
believed that she spoke the truth.
"You have actually seen him?" she repeated in a wondering voice. She
gazed at her stolid companion with envy. "You have spoken to him? And he
to you? When?"
"A year ago, at Suakin. Else why should I be here?"
The question came as a shock to Ethne. She did not guess the correct
answer; she was not, indeed, sufficiently mistress of herself to
speculate upon any answer, but she dreaded it, whatever it might be.
"Yes," she said slowly, and almost reluctantly. "After all, why are you
here?"
Willoughby took a letter-case from his breast, opened it with
deliberation, and shook out from one of its pockets into the palm of his
hand a tiny, soiled, white feather. He held it out to Ethne.
"I have come to give you this."
Ethne did not take it. In fact, she positively shrank from it.
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