At all events, I should not, I think, have been cruel." Not for the first time did remorse for that fourth feather which she had added to the three, seize upon her.

She sat now crushed by it into silence.

Captain Willoughby, however, was a stubborn man, unwilling upon any occasion to admit an error.

He saw that Ethne's remorse by implication condemned himself, and that he was not prepared to suffer.
"Yes, but these fine distinctions are a little too elusive for practical purposes," he said.

"You can't run the world on fine distinctions; so I cannot bring myself to believe that we three men were at all to blame, and if we were not, you of all people can have no reason for self-reproach." Ethne did not consider what he precisely meant by the last reference to herself.