This book is dedicated To Miss Elspeth Angela Campbell...

The character of Harry Feversham is developed from a short story by the author, originally printed in the Illustrated London News, and since republished....

Lieutenant Sutch was the first of General Feversham’s guests to reach Broad Place. He arrived about five o’clock on an afternoon of sunshine in mid June, and the old redbrick house, lodged on a southe...

Thirteen years later, and in the same month of June, Harry Feversham’s health was drunk again, but after a quieter fashion and in a smaller company. The company was gathered in a room high up in a sha...

Durrance, meanwhile, walked to his lodging alone, remembering a day, now two years since, when by a curious whim of old Dermod Eustace he had been fetched against his will to the house by the Lennon R...

Yet Feversham had travelled to Dublin by the night mail after his ride with Durrance in the Row. He had crossed Lough Swilly on the following forenoon by a little cargo steamer, which once a week stea...

Habit assisted them; the irresponsible chatter of the ballroom sprang automatically to their lips; the appearance of enjoyment never failed from off their faces; so that no one at Lennon House that ni...

It was the night of August 30. A month had passed since the ball at Lennon House, but the uneventful countryside of Donegal was still busy with the stimulating topic of Harry Feversham’s disappearance...

“No one,” said Durrance, and he strapped his field-glasses into the leather case at his side. “No one, sir,” Captain Mather agreed. “We will move forward.” The scouts went on ahead, the troops resumed...

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 marvelling at the grace of his countrywomen and the ...

The farmhouse stood a mile above the village, in a wild moorland country. The heather encroached upon its garden, and the bridle-path ended at its door. On three sides an amphitheatre of hills, which ...

In that month of May Durrance lifted his eyes from Wadi Halfa and began eagerly to look homeward. But in the contrary direction, five hundred miles to the south of his frontier town, on the other side...

A month later Durrance arrived in London and discovered a letter from Ethne awaiting him at his club. It told him simply that she was staying with Mrs. Adair, and would be glad if he would find the ti...

It was a night of May, and outside the mess-room at Wadi Halfa three officers were smoking on a grass knoll above the Nile. The moon was at its full, and the strong light had robbed even the planets o...

Ethne stood at the drawing-room window of the house in Hill Street. Mrs. Adair sat in front of her tea-table. Both women were waiting, and they were both listening for some particular sound to rise up...

During the months of July and August Ethne’s apprehensions grew, and once at all events they found expression on her lips. “I am afraid,” she said, one morning, as she stood in the sunlight at an open...

“I will not interrupt you,” said Ethne, as Willoughby took his seat beside her, and he had barely spoken a score of words before she broke that promise. “I am Deputy-Governor of Suakin,” he began. “My...

Ethne had entirely forgotten even Colonel Durrance’s existence. From the moment when Captain Willoughby had put that little soiled feather which had once been white, and was now yellow, into her hand,...

Mrs. Adair, on her side, asked for no explanations. She was naturally, behind her pale and placid countenance, a woman of a tortuous and intriguing mind. She preferred to look through a keyhole even w...

Ethne did not turn towards Durrance or move at all from her attitude. She sat with her violin upon her knees, looking across the moonlit garden to the band of silver in the gap of the trees; and she k...

Ethne had thought to escape quite unobserved. But Mrs. Adair was sitting upon the terrace in the shadow of the house, and not very far from the open window of the drawing-room. She saw Ethne lightly c...

Durrance found his body-servant waiting up for him when he had come across the fields to his own house of Guessens. “You can turn the lights out and go to bed,” said Durrance, and he walked through th...

Mrs. Adair speculated with some uneasiness upon the consequences of the disclosures which she had made to Durrance. She was in doubt as to the course which he would take. It seemed possible that he mi...

Captain Willoughby was known at his club for a bore. He was a determined raconteur of pointless stories about people with whom not one of his audience was acquainted. And there was no deterring him, f...

Within the drawing-room at The Pool, Durrance said goodbye to Ethne. He had so arranged it that there should be little time for that leave-taking, and already the carriage stood at the steps of Guesse...

It was a callous country inhabited by a callous race, thought Calder, as he travelled down the Nile from Wadi Halfa to Assouan on his three months’ furlough. He leaned over the rail of the upper deck ...

At the time when Calder, disappointed at his failure to obtain news of Feversham from the one man who possessed it, stepped into a carriage of the train at Assouan, Lieutenant Sutch was driving along ...

Lieutenant Sutch, though he went late to bed, was early astir in the morning. He roused the household, packed and repacked his clothes, and made such a bustle and confusion that everything to be done ...

Those were the days before the great mud wall was built about the House of Stone in Omdurman. Only a thorn zeriba as yet enclosed that noisome prison and the space about it. It stood upon the eastern ...

For three days Feversham rambled and wandered in his talk, and for three days Trench fetched him water from the Nile, shared his food with him, and ministered to his wants; for three nights, too, he s...

“Three more days.” Both men fell asleep with these words upon their lips. But the next morning Trench waked up and complained of a fever; and the fever rapidly gained upon him, so that before the afte...

The wind blew keen and cold from the north. The camels, freshened by it, trotted out at their fastest pace. “Quicker,” said Trench, between his teeth. “Already Idris may have missed us.” “Even if he h...

On an August morning of the same year Harry Feversham rode across the Lennon bridge into Ramelton. The fierce suns of the Sudan had tanned his face, the years of his probation had left their marks; he...

Ethne sat down in the corner of a pew next to the aisle, and Feversham took his stand beside her. It was very quiet and peaceful within that tiny church. The afternoon sun shone through the upper wind...

The incredible words were spoken that evening. Ethne went into her farmhouse and sat down in the parlour. She felt cold that summer evening and had the fire lighted. She sat gazing into the bright coa...

In the early summer of next year two old men sat reading their newspapers after breakfast upon the terrace of Broad Place. The elder of the two turned over a sheet. “I see Osman Digna’s back at Suakin...

The native bedstead of matting woven across a four-legged frame. ↩...