"It is not all harm which has come of these years. They were not wasted."
But Feversham thought of her lonely years in this village of Glenalla—and thought with a man's thought, unaware that nowhere else would she have chosen to live. He looked into her face, and saw the marks of the years upon it. It was not that she had aged so much. Her big grey eyes shone as clearly as before, the colour was still as bright upon her cheeks. But there was more of character. She had suffered; she had eaten of the tree of knowledge.
"I am sorry," he said. "I did you a great wrong six years ago, and I need not."
She held out her hand to him.
"Will you give it me, please?"
And for a moment he did not understand.
"That fourth feather," she said.
He drew his letter-case from his coat, and shook two feathers out into the palm of his hand. The larger one, the ostrich feather, he held out to her. But she said:—
"Both."
There was no reason why he should keep Castleton's feather any longer. He handed them both to her, since she asked for them, and she clasped them, and with a smile treasured them against her breast.