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Updated: June 3, 2025
Eleanor Kent thought she saw Conscience wince and close her eyes for an instant as though in a paroxysm of pain, but her question came gravely: "How did I find out what?" "Why, that he was the sort of man that well, that his mixing up in that Holbury scandal indicated."
She had made her assertion in so categorical a form that to withhold her authority now meant to appear absurd, and she had not wished to betray the confidence of Marian Holbury. So she fell back on the alternative of a partial explanation. "Mrs. Holbury herself explained the matter to me. It was a chapter of accidental appearances."
A pale flush rose to Mrs. Tollman's cheeks and she volunteered no reply. The two women, each unusual in her beauty and each the other's opposite of type, stood with the quiet repression of their breeding, yet with an impalpable spirit of enmity between them: the enmity of two women who at heart love one man. Mrs. Holbury spoke first.
"What are you doing here and alone?" Mrs. Holbury stood leaning limply against the door-frame. She was in evening dress, and a wrap, glistening with the shimmer of silver, drooped loosely about her gleaming shoulders. "It's over," she declared in a passionate and unprefaced outburst. "I can't stand it! I'm done with him! I've left him!" Stuart spread his hands in dumfounded amazement.
They were without warning when the door suddenly burst open, and across the bare shoulder of the woman, who still hung sobbing to him, Stuart saw the bloated and apoplectic face of Larry Holbury and at his back the frightened countenance of two servants. The husband came unsteadily several steps into the room, and lifted a hand which shook as he pointed to the tableau.
I believed it until the other day when we talked about Marian Holbury then I knew that you were still in love with me." Farquaharson's face paled and his lips tightened. "I had tried," he said slowly, "to let you think the things which might make you happier but I don't seem to be a good actor." "You were a splendid actor, Stuart, but you had a woman's intuition against you."
The hostess may have indicated the astonishment she sought to conceal, for Mrs. Holbury laughed and again her eyes had that unmasked frankness which made surprisingly unconventional assertions seem quite normal. "I am wondering, Mrs. Holbury," Conscience spoke now without any hint of hostility disarmed by her visitor's candor, "why you are telling me this."
Conscience was somewhat bewildered, but she answered quietly, "Of course, Mrs. Holbury. You must forgive me if I seemed discourteous.... I was so surprised. Won't you be seated?" "Thank you." The visitor took a chair and for a moment sat gazing across the coloring hills where the maples were flaring with yellow and the oaks were russet-brown.
However it had happened, thought Stuart, it was a deplorable accident: their being thrown together for ten days in the narrowed companionship of a sea-voyage. For her, even more than himself, it must bring back the painful notoriety of their last companionship. It had all been so bootless and uncalled for! Marian Holbury might have divorced her husband had she wished, and remained unstigmatized.
Farquaharson now my opinion?" "In the Philippines," said Marian Holbury, "the army officers have a name for a dishonorable discharge from the service. They call it the 'yellow furlough. Do you imagine that Stuart Farquaharson could willingly retire in that fashion? Don't you see how greatly he would covet an honorable discharge?"
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