He was a soldier of a type not so rare as the makers of war stories wish their readers to believe.

Hector of Troy was his ancestor; he was neither hysterical in his language nor vindictive in his acts; he was not an elderly schoolboy with a taste for loud talk, but a quiet man who did his work without noise, who could be stern when occasion needed and of an unflinching severity, but whose nature was gentle and compassionate.

And this barbaric utterance of Ethne Eustace he did not understand.
"You disliked Major Castleton so much ?" he exclaimed.
"I never knew him." "Yet you are glad that he is dead ?" "I am quite glad," said Ethne, stubbornly.
She made another slip when she spoke thus of Major Castleton, and Durrance did not pass it by unnoticed.

He remembered it, and thought it over in his gun-room at Guessens.

It added something to the explanation which he was building up of Harry Feversham's disgrace and disappearance.