But I am well paid for it,
for it has wrecked my life besides."
Captain Willoughby could not understand, any more than General Feversham
could have understood, or than Ethne had. But Willoughby could at all
events remember and repeat, and Ethne had grown by five years of
unhappiness since the night when Harry Feversham, in the little room
off the hall at Lennon House, had told her of his upbringing, of the
loss of his mother, and the impassable gulf between his father and
himself, and of the fear of disgrace which had haunted his nights and
disfigured the world for him by day.
"Yes, it was an illusion," she cried. "I understand. I might have
understood a long while since, but I would not. When those feathers came
he told me why they were sent, quite simply, with his eyes on mine. When
my father knew of them, he waited quite steadily and faced my father."
There was other evidence of the like kind not within Ethne's knowledge.
Harry Feversham had journeyed down to Broad Place in Surrey and made his
confession no less unflinchingly to the old general. But Ethne knew
enough. "It was the possibility of cowardice from which he shrank, not
the possibility of hurt," she exclaimed.
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