It had reversed their positions.
Mrs.Adair, however, was more interested in Ethne's unusual burst of confidence.

There was no doubt of it, she reflected.

The girl, once remarkable for a quiet frankness of word and look, was declining into a creature of shifts and agitation.
"There is something, then, to be concealed from him ?" she asked quietly.
"Yes." "Something rather important ?" "Something which at all costs I must conceal," Ethne exclaimed, and was not sure, even while she spoke, that Durrance had not already found it out.

She stepped over the threshold of the window on to the terrace.

In front of her the lawn stretched to a hedge; on the far side of that hedge a couple of grass fields lifted and fell in gentle undulations; and beyond the fields she could see amongst a cluster of trees the smoke from the chimneys of Colonel Durrance's house.