CHAPTER XIV.
CAPTAIN WILLOUGHBY REAPPEARS 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 window of Mrs.Adair's house upon a creek of the Salcombe estuary.
In the room behind her Mrs.Adair smiled quietly.
"Of what?
That some accident happened to Colonel Durrance yesterday in London ?" "No," Ethne answered slowly, "not of that.

For he is at this moment crossing the lawn towards us." Again Mrs.Adair smiled, but she did not raise her head from the book which she was reading, so that it might have been some passage in the book which so amused and pleased her.
"I thought so," she said, but in so low a voice that the words barely reached Ethne's ears.

They did not penetrate to her mind, for as she looked across the stone-flagged terrace and down the broad shallow flight of steps to the lawn, she asked abruptly:-- "Do you think he has any hope whatever that he will recover his sight ?" The question had not occurred to Mrs.Adair before, and she gave to it now no importance in her thoughts.
"Would he travel up to town so often to see his oculist if he had none ?" she asked in reply.

"Of course he hopes." "I am afraid," said Ethne, and she turned with a sudden movement towards her friend.

"Haven't you noticed how quick he has grown and is growing?
Quick to interpret your silences, to infer what you do not say from what you do, to fill out your sentences, to make your movements the commentary of your words?
Laura, haven't you noticed?
At times I think the very corners of my mind are revealed to him.