The incredible words were spoken that evening. Ethne went into her farm-house and sat down in the parlour. She felt cold that summer evening and had the fire lighted. She sat gazing into the bright coals with that stillness of attitude which was a sure sign with her of tense emotion. The moment so eagerly looked for had come, and it was over. She was alone now in her remote little village, out of the world in the hills, and more alone than she had been since Willoughby sailed on that August morning down the Salcombe estuary. From the time of Willoughby's coming she had looked forward night and day to the one half-hour during which Harry Feversham would be with her. The half-hour had come and passed. She knew now how she had counted upon its coming, how she had lived for it. She felt lonely in a rather empty world. But it was part of her nature that she had foreseen this sense of loneliness; she had known that there would be a bad hour for her after she had sent Harry Feversham away, that all her heart and soul would clamour to her to call him back. And she forced herself, as she sat shivering by the fire, to remember that she had always foreseen and had always looked beyond it. To-morrow she would know again that they had not parted forever, to-morrow she would compare the parting of to-day with the parting on the night of the ball at Lennon House, and recognise what a small thing this was to that. She fell to wondering what Harry Feversham would do now that he had returned, and while she was building up for him a future of great distinction she felt Dermod's old collie dog nuzzling at her hand with his sure instinct that his mistress was in distress. Ethne rose from her chair and took the dog's head between her hands and kissed it. He was very old, she thought; he would die soon and leave her, and then there would be years and years, perhaps, before she lay down in her bed and knew the great moment was at hand.
There came a knock upon the door, and a servant told her that Colonel Durrance was waiting.
"Yes," she said, and as he entered the room she went forward to meet him. She did not shirk the part which she had allotted to herself. She stepped out from the secret chamber of her grief as soon as she was summoned.
She talked with her visitor as though no unusual thing had happened an hour before, she even talked of their marriage and the rebuilding of Lennon House. It was difficult, but she had grown used to difficulties. Only that night Durrance made her path a little harder 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.