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Eben had been the listener, a rôle into which he usually fell when conversation became general, but now he assumed a more active participation. "Chatham is quite a distance from us, Mr. Farquaharson," he suggested, "but it's only about two hundred yards from our terrace to the float in the cove. However, you know that cove yourself." Into Farquaharson's face came the light of keen remembrance.
The elder man stood for a moment glancing from his guest to his wife, and in that instant of scrutiny whatever of the inquisitorial might have lurked in his eyes left them for a bland suavity. Conscience had hastened forward and her lips were smiling. Farquaharson's eyes dared to meet his own with a level straightforwardness.
"I thought I'd go to Providence for some shopping. However, I can go by train." Providence! Monday! The place and day of Stuart Farquaharson's opening with his comedy in three acts. Yesterday such a suspicion would have seemed impossibly absurd. To-day he realized that yesterday he had been a blind fool. "Do you mind my going with you?"
He rides like a centaur, talks like a diplomat and flatters as only a Virginian or an Irishman can flatter. The same whisper has it that the husband suffers in the parallel." Farquaharson's face darkened and he reached for his discarded coat. "Hold on; you have company," suggested Wayne placatingly. "Where do you think you're going in such hot haste?"
Farquaharson's face lighted with genuine pleasure as he grasped the outstretched hand in a grip of cramping heartiness. "Jimmy Hancock!" he exclaimed. "Why, man, I haven't seen you since " He paused, and Jimmy, seating himself, grinned back as he took up the unfinished sentence: "'Since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary I'll have Scotch and soda, thank you." Farquaharson laughed.
Voices rich with the gold of love's abandon sang the songs of composers, wholly dedicated to love's own form of expression. Stuart Farquaharson's cigar had gone out and he sat meditative in the shadows of the terrace himself a shadowy shape, with his eyes fixed upon Conscience, and Conscience, too, remained quiet with that unstirring stillness which bespeaks a mood of dreams.
Don't this feller ever take a drink or play around with any female companions?" "You ain't got the angle straight on Farquaharson," observed the sleuth who had for some time been Farquaharson's shadow. "He ain't that kind. I'm living in the same apartment hotel with him and my room's next door to his. I don't fall for the slush-stuff, Chief, but that feller gets my goat. He's hurt and hurt bad.
"Very good, sir," was his ready reply. "It may be a near thing, but I fancy you'll make it." Stuart Farquaharson's acknowledgment of the cablegram was brief. For the same reason which had made him so urgent in entreating Conscience to take no step until he arrived, it seemed better now that he should remain absent.
But Conscience did not at once turn into the house and close the door behind her. She stood by one of the tall pillars and the boy strained his gaze to make out more than the vague outline of a shadow-shape. Then slowly she came down the stairs and out onto the moonlit lawn, walking meditatively in the direction of Stuart Farquaharson's hiding place.
Now he smilingly interposed, "Let me explain, Mr. Farquaharson, I took the liberty of couching my invitation in my wife's name because I knew she shared my wish to have you with us but for her I reserved the pleasure of a complete surprise." There was for an instant an awkward tableau of embarrassment. A flush of instinctive anger rose to Farquaharson's temples.
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