There was nothing more which he could find to say, and he held out his hand to her.
"Good-bye," she said, and Durrance climbed over the stile and crossed the fields to his house.
Mrs.Adair stood by that stile for a long while after he had gone.

She had shot her bolt and hit no one but herself and the man for whom she cared.
She realised that distinctly.

She looked forward a little, too, and she understood that if Durrance did not, after all, keep Ethne to her promise and marry her and go with her to her country, he would come back to Guessens.

That reflection showed Mrs.Adair yet more clearly the folly of her outcry.

If she had only kept silence, she would have had a very true and constant friend for her neighbour, and that would have been something.