ked upon as dead, and she had
believed that she spoke the truth.

"You have actually seen him?" she repeated in a wondering voice. She
gazed at her stolid companion with envy. "You have spoken to him? And he
to you? When?"

"A year ago, at Suakin. Else why should I be here?"

The question came as a shock to Ethne. She did not guess the correct
answer; she was not, indeed, sufficiently mistress of herself to
speculate upon any answer, but she dreaded it, whatever it might be.

"Yes," she said slowly, and almost reluctantly. "After all, why are you
here?"

Willoughby took a letter-case from his breast, opened it with
deliberation, and shook out from one of its pockets into the palm of his
hand a tiny, soiled, white feather. He held it out to Ethne.

"I have come to give you this."

Ethne did not take it. In fact, she positively shrank from it.

"Why?" she asked unsteadily.

"Three white feathers, three separate accusations of cowardice, were
sent to Feversham by three separate men. This is actually one of those
feathers which were forwarded from his lodgings to Ramelton five years
ago. I am one of the three men who sent them. I have come to tell you
that I withdraw my accusation. I take my feather back."

"And you bring it to me?"

"He asked me to."

Ethne took the feather in her palm, a thing in itself so light and
fragile and yet so momentous as a symbol, and the trees and the garden
began to whirl suddenly about her. She was aware that Captain Willoughby
was speaking, but his voice had grown extraordinarily distant and thin;
so that she was annoyed, since she wished very much to hear all that he
had to say. She felt very cold, even upon that August day of sunlight.
But the presence of Captain Willoughby, one of the three men whom she
never would forgive, helped her to command herself. She would give no
exhibition of weakness before any one of the detested three, and with an
effort she recovered herself when she was on the very point of swooning.

"Come," she said, "I will hear your story. Your news was rather a shock
to me. Even now I do not quite understand."

She led the way from that open space to a little plot of grass above the
creek. On three sides thick hedges enclosed it, at the back rose the
tall elms and poplars, in front the water flashed and broke in ripples,
and beyond the water the trees rose again and were overtopped by sloping
meadows. A gap in the hedge made an entrance into this enclo