Durrance reached London one morning in June, and on that afternoon took the first walk of the exile, into Hyde Park, where he sat beneath the trees marvelling¹ at the grace of his countrywomen and the delicacy² of their apparel, a solitary³ figure, sunburnt and stamped already with that indefinable expression of the eyes and face which marks the men set apart in the distant corners of the world. Amongst the people who strolled past him, one, however, smiled, and, as he rose from his chair, Mrs. Adair came to his side. She looked him over from head to foot with a quick and almost furtive⁴ glance which might have told even Durrance something of the place which he held in her thoughts. She was comparing him with the picture which she had of him now three years old. She was looking for the small marks of change which those three years might have brought about, and with eyes of apprehension⁵. But Durrance only noticed that she was dressed in black. She understood the question in his mind and answered it.  
"My husband died eighteen months ago," she explained in a quiet voice. "He was thrown from his horse during a run with the Pytchley. He was killed at once."
 
"I had not heard," Durrance answered awkwardly. "I am very sorry."
 
Mrs. Adair took a chair beside him and did not reply. She was a woman of perplexing silences; and her pale and placid⁶ face, with its cold correct outline, gave no clue to the thoughts with which she occupied them. She sat without stirring. Durrance was embarrassed. He remembered Mr. Adair as a good-humoured man, whose one chief quality was his evident affection for his wife, but with what eyes the wife had looked upon him he had never up till now considered. Mr. Adair indeed had been at the best a shadowy figure in that small household, and Durrance found it difficult even to draw upon his recollections for any full expression of regret. He gave up the attempt and asked:—
 
"Are Harry⁷ Feversham and his wife in town?"
 
Mrs. Adair was slow to reply.
 
"Not yet," she said, after a pause, but immediately she corrected herself, and said a little hurriedly, "I mean—the marriage never took place."
 
Durrance was not a man easily startled, and even when he was, his surprise was not expressed in exclamations⁸.
 
"I don't think that I understand. Why did it never take place?" he asked. Mrs. Adair looked sharply at him, as though inquiring for the reason of his deliberate tones.
 
"I don't know why," she said. "Ethne can keep a secret if she wishes," and Durrance nodded his assent⁹. "The marriage was broken off on the night of a dance at Lennon House."
 
Durrance turned at once to her.
 
"Just before I left England three years ago?"
 
"Yes. Then you knew?"
 
"No. Only you have explained to me something which occurred on the very night that I left Dover. What has become of Harry?"
 
Mrs. Adair shrugged¹¹ her shoulders.
 
"I do not know. I have met no one who does know. I do not think that I have met any one who has even seen him since that time. He must have left England."
 
Durrance pondered on this mysterious disappearance¹². It was Harry Feversham, then, whom he had seen upon the pier¹³ as the Channel boat cast off. The man with the troubled and despairing face was, after all, his friend.
 
"And Miss Eustace?" he asked after a pause, with a queer timidity. "She has married since?"
 
Again Mrs. Adair took her time to reply.
 
"No," said she.
 
"Then she is still at Ramelton?"
 
Mrs. Adair shook her head.
 
"There was a fire at Lennon House a year ago. Did you ever hear of a constable¹⁴ called Bastable?"
 
"Indeed, I did. He was the means of introducing me to Miss Eustace and her father. I was travelling from Londonderry to Letterkenny. I received a letter from Mr. Eustace, whom I did not know, but who knew from my friends at Letterkenny that I was coming past his house. He asked me to stay the night with him. Naturally enough I declined, with the result that Bastable arrested me on a magistrate's warrant as soon as I landed from the ferry."
 
"That is the man," said Mrs. Adair, and she told Durrance the history of the fire. It appeared that Bastable's claim to Dermod's friendship rested upon his skill in preparing a particular brew¹⁵ of toddy, which needed a single oyster¹⁶ simmering in the saucepan to give it its perfection of flavour. About two o'clock of a June morning the spirit lamp on which the saucepan stewed¹⁷ had been overset; neither of the two confederates in drink had their wits about them at the moment, and the house was half burnt and the rest of it ruined by water before the fire could be got under.
 
"There were consequences still more distressing¹⁸ than the destruction of the house," she continued. "The fire was a beacon¹⁹ warning to Dermod's creditors²⁰ for one thing, and Dermod, already overpowered with debts, fell in a day upon complete ruin. He was drenched²¹ by the water hoses besides, and took a chill which nearly killed him, from the effects of which he has never recovered. You will find him a broken man. The estates are let, and Ethne is now living with her father in a little mountain village in Donegal."
 
Mrs. Adair had not looked at Durrance while she spoke²². She kept her eyes fixed²³ steadily²⁴ in front of her, and indeed she spoke without feeling on one side or the other, but rather like a person constraining²⁵ herself to speech because speech was a necessity. Nor did she turn to look at Durrance when she had done.
 
"So she has lost everything?" said Durrance.
 
"She still has a home in Donegal," returned Mrs. Adair.
 
"And that means a great deal to her," said Durrance, slowly. "Yes, I think you are right."
 
"It means," said Mrs. Adair, "that Ethne with all her ill-luck has reason to be envied by many other women."
 
Durrance did not answer that suggestion directly. He watched the carriages drive past, he listened to the chatter²⁶ and the laughter of the people about him, his eyes were refreshed by the women in their light-coloured frocks; and all the time his slow mind was working toward the lame²⁷ expression of his philosophy. Mrs. Adair turned to him with a slight impatience²⁸ in the end.
 
"Of what are you thinking?" she asked.
 
"That women suffer much more than men when the world goes wrong with them," he answered, and the answer was rather a question than a definite assertion. "I know very little, of course. I can only guess. But I think women gather up into themselves what they have been through much more than ............