Suppose that a white feather had been forwarded to Lennon House, and had been opened in Ethne's presence?
Or more than one white feather?
Ethne had come back from her long talk with Willoughby holding that white feather as though there was nothing so precious in all the world.
So much Mrs.Adair had told him.
It followed, then, that the cowardice was atoned, or in one particular atoned.

Ethne's recapture of her youth pointed inevitably to that conclusion.

She treasured the feather because it was no longer a symbol of cowardice but a symbol of cowardice atoned.
But Harry Feversham had not returned, he still slunk in the world's by-ways.

Willoughby, then, was not the only man who had brought the accusation; there were others--two others.

One of the two Durrance had long since identified.