arder to tread. He
asked her, after the maid had brought in the tea, to play to him the
Musoline Overture upon her violin.

"Not to-night," said Ethne. "I am rather tired." And she had hardly
spoken before she changed her mind. Ethne was determined that in the
small things as well as in the great she must not shirk. The small
things with their daily happenings were just those about which she must
be most careful. "Still I think that I can play the overture," she said
with a smile, and she took down her violin. She played the overture
through from the beginning to the end. Durrance stood at the window with
his back towards her until she had ended. Then he walked to her side.

"I was rather a brute," he said quietly, "to ask you to play that
overture to-night."

"I wasn't anxious to play," she answered as she laid the violin aside.

"I know. But I was anxious to find out something, and I knew no other
way of finding it out."

Ethne turned up to him a startled face.

"What do you mean?" she asked in a voice of suspense.

"You are so seldom off your guard. Only indeed at rare times when you
play. Once before when you played that overture you were off your guard.
I thought that if I could get you to play it again to-night--the
overture which was once strummed out in a dingy cafe at Wadi
Halfa--to-night again I should find you off your guard."

His words took her breath away and the colour from her cheeks. She got
up slowly from her chair and stared at him wide-eyed. He could not know.
It was impossible. He did not know.

But Durrance went quietly on.

"Well? Did you take back your feather? The fourth one?"

These to Ethne were the incredible words. Durrance spoke them with a
smile upon his face. It took her a long time to understand that he had
actually spoken them. She was not sure at the first that her
overstrained senses were not playing her tricks; but he repeated his
question, and she could no longer disbelieve or misunderstand.

"Who told you of any fourth feather?" she asked.

"Trench," he answered. "I met him at Dover. But he only told me of the
fourth feather," said Durrance. "I knew of the three before. Trench
would never have told me of the fourth had I not known of the three. For
I should not have met him as he landed from the steamer at Dover. I
should not have asked him, 'Where is Harry Feversham?' And for me to
know of the three was enough."

"How do you know?" she cried in a kind of despair,