Harry Feversham had succeeded once
under great difficulties, in the face of great peril. The peril was
greater now, the difficulties more arduous to overcome; that she clearly
understood. But she took the one success as an augury that another
might follow it. Feversham would have laid his plans with care; he had
money wherewith to carry them out; and, besides, she was a woman of
strong faith. But she was relieved to know that the sender of the third
feather could never be approached. Moreover, she hated him, and there
was an end of the matter.
Durrance was startled. He was a soldier of a type not so rare as the
makers of war stories wish their readers to believe. Hector of Troy was
his ancestor; he was neither hysterical in his language nor vindictive
in his acts; he was not an elderly schoolboy with a taste for loud talk,
but a quiet man who did his work without noise, who could be stern when
occasion needed and of an unflinching severity, but whose nature was
gentle and compassionate. And this barbaric utterance of Ethne Eustace
he did not understand.
"You disliked Major Castleton so much?" he exclaimed.
"I never knew him."
"Yet you are glad that he is dead?"
"I am quite glad," said Ethne, stubbornly.
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