Lieutenant Sutch was puzzled, but he did not
deny the imputation.
"It is true," he said stoutly. "I am very glad that she knows. I can
quite see that from your point of view it would be better if she did not
know. But I cannot help it. I am very glad."
Durrance laughed, and not at all unpleasantly. "I like you the better
for being glad," he said.
"But how does Miss Eustace know?" asked Sutch. "Who told her? I did not,
and there is no one else who could tell her."
"You are wrong. There is Captain Willoughby. He came to Devonshire six
weeks ago. He brought with him a white feather which he gave to Miss
Eustace, as a proof that he withdrew his charge of cowardice against
Harry Feversham."
Sutch stopped the pony in the middle of the road. He no longer troubled
to conceal the joy which this good news caused him. Indeed, he forgot
altogether Durrance's presence at his side. He sat quite silent and
still, with a glow of happiness upon him, such as he had never known in
all his life. He was an old man now, well on in his sixties; he had
reached an age when the blood runs slow, and the pleasures are of a grey
sober kind, and joy has lost its fevers. But there welled up in his
heart a gladness of such buoyancy as only falls to the lot of youth.
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