"
And at once Ethne interrupted.
"How did he look?"
Willoughby wrinkled his forehead and opened his eyes wide.
"Really, I do not know," he said doubtfully. "Much like other men, I
suppose, who have been a year or two in the Soudan, a trifle overtrained
and that sort of thing."
"Never mind," said Ethne, with a sigh of disappointment. For five years
she had heard no word of Harry Feversham. She fairly hungered for news
of him, for the sound of his habitual phrases, for the description of
his familiar gestures. She had the woman's anxiety for his bodily
health, she wished to know whether he had changed in face or figure,
and, if so, how and in what measure. But she glanced at the obtuse,
unobservant countenance of Captain Willoughby, and she understood that
however much she craved for these particulars, she must go without.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "Will you go on?"
"I asked him what he wanted," Willoughby resumed, "and why he had not
sent in his name. 'You would not have seen me if I had,' he replied, and
he drew a packet of letters out of his pocket. Now, those letters, Miss
Eustace, had been written a long while ago by General Gordon in Khartum.
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