Your news was rather a shock
to me. Even now I do not quite understand."
She led the way from that open space to a little plot of grass above the
creek. On three sides thick hedges enclosed it, at the back rose the
tall elms and poplars, in front the water flashed and broke in ripples,
and beyond the water the trees rose again and were overtopped by sloping
meadows. A gap in the hedge made an entrance into this enclosure, and a
garden-seat stood in the centre of the grass.
"Now," said Ethne, and she motioned to Captain Willoughby to take a seat
at her side. "You will take your time, perhaps. You will forget nothing.
Even his words, if you remember them! I shall thank you for his words."
She held that white feather clenched in her hand. Somehow Harry
Feversham had redeemed his honour, somehow she had been unjust to him;
and she was to learn how. She was in no hurry. She did not even feel one
pang of remorse that she had been unjust. Remorse, no doubt, would come
afterwards. At present the mere knowledge that she had been unjust was
too great a happiness to admit of abatement. She opened her hand and
looked at the feather. And as she looked, memories sternly repressed for
so long, regrets which she had thought stifled quite out of life,
longings which had grown strange, filled all her thoughts.
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