Ethne unlocked a drawer in her dressing-case, and took from it the
portrait which alone of all Harry Feversham's presents she had kept. She
rejoiced that she had kept it. It was the portrait of some one who was
dead to her--that she knew very well, for there was no thought of
disloyalty toward Durrance in her breast--but the some one was a friend.
She looked at it with a great happiness and contentment, because Harry
Feversham had needed no expression of faith from her to inspire him,
and no encouragement from her to keep him through the years on the level
of his high inspiration. When she put it back again, she laid the white
feather in the drawer with it and locked the two things up together.
She came back to her window. Out upon the lawn a light breeze made the
shadows from the high trees dance, the sunlight mellowed and reddened.
But Ethne was of her county, as Harry Feversham had long ago discovered,
and her heart yearned for it at this moment. It was the month of August.
The first of the heather would be out upon the hillsides of Donegal, and
she wished that the good news had been brought to her there. The regret
that it had not was her crumpled rose-leaf.
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