She brought to the dinner-table that night a buoyancy of spirit which
surprised her companions. Mrs. Adair had to admit that seldom had her
eyes shone so starrily, or the colour so freshly graced her cheeks. She
was more than ever certain that Captain Willoughby had brought stirring
news; she was more than ever tortured by her vain efforts to guess its
nature. But Mrs. Adair, in spite of her perplexities, took her share in
the talk, and that dinner passed with a freedom from embarrassment
unknown since Durrance had come home to Guessens. For he, too, threw off
a burden of restraint; his spirits rose to match Ethne's; he answered
laugh with laugh, and from his face that habitual look of tension, the
look of a man listening with all his might that his ears might make good
the loss of his eyes, passed altogether away.
"You will play on your violin to-night, I think," he said with a smile,
as they rose from the table.
"Yes," she answered, "I will--with all my heart."
Durrance laughed and held open the door. The violin had remained locked
in its case during these last two months. Durrance had come to look upon
that violin as a gauge and test. If the world was going well with Ethne,
the case was unlocked, the instrument was allowed to speak; if the world
went ill, it was kept silent lest it should say too much, and open old
wounds and lay them bare to other eyes.
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