Farquaharson raised his brows, then his laugh rang out with a somewhat satirical merriment.

"And this from you! You admit in fiction the exact truths that you deny in life."

"But your lady was tricked into marriage in the first place," responded Conscience with spirit. "You show me half the reason that woman had and I'll start my lawyer filing a petition the same day. I'll go further than that." Her eyes were twinkling since she meant to treat all these allusions so lightly as to disarm his own seriousness. "As a self-inflicted penalty I'll marry you."

"I wonder if you would."

"On my word of honor, and meanwhile our tea is getting cold. One lump, isn't it?"

He nodded; then, as he watched the deftness with which her hands made a pretty ceremony of pouring tea, he inquired: "Have I seen that ring before--the opal with diamonds?"

"I don't believe you have. Eben gave it to me last Christmas."

"And you're not afraid of the opal's ill-luck?"

"I love them enough to take the chance. Haven't I ever shown you my others--there's quite a collection of them."

"No."

"They're in the safe. I'll get Eben to open it as soon as Mr. Hagan leaves."

Teasingly the man inquired, "Doesn't your husband trust you with the combination?"

Conscience flushed. Her companion had touched a sensitive nerve. This was one of the details that went into the summary of Eben's excluding her from his business life, and it had hurt her.

"I can't ever master it somehow," she evaded, and as she spoke Eben Tollman ushered Mr. Hagan out upon the terrace.

As stranger and host passed out Stuart fancied that he detected in Tollman's manner a certain eagerness to speed the parting guest and when the visitor had gone, Eben withdrew at once to his sanctum, declining a cup of tea. The bad half hour had shaken him and sent his thoughts coursing in channels of apprehension. The past was refusing to lie dead and he found himself thinking of what might occur if two wisely intercepted letters should ever fall into the wrong hands.

They lay securely immured in the safe, but he had overheard the teasing reference to his withholding, from his wife, the combination--and it vexed his anxiety. He treasured these trophies of his acumen and victory, but palpably the time had arrived for their sacrifice.

He reconsidered an impulse to lock himself in. Once to-day he had apologized for inadvertently throwing on the catch and a repetition would seem pointed. The letters were in an envelope inscribed "S. F. & C. W." and there would be no difficulty in finding them.

So Eben Tollman opened the safe, and unlocked a certain strong box filled to overflowing with papers of divers sorts.

As he stood holding the tin dispatch case with its cover raised he heard Stuart's voice beyond the threshold and it was a voice couched in a tone of annoying and unthinking levity.

"Don't forget! If I prove a case as strong as my heroine's you will act as you say she should act."

"It's a bargain," came the quick and laughing response. "I'm ready to prove my faith by my works." Then as the pair appeared framed in the door, Conscience explained, "Eben, I want to show Stuart my opals."

To Tollman it seemed a most untimely interruption. Possibly that was why the fingers that held the box trembled, as he came around to his chair at the desk and said shortly, "They're in the larger drawer at the left."

As Conscience came over to the safe Stuart followed her until he stood across the width of the desk from his host whom he regarded absently.

Then something quite unaccountable occurred. Mrs. Tollman, in putting down the somewhat heavy metal tray containing her trinkets, let it slip, so that it spilled its rings, and pins and necklaces on the desk top--and as if responsive to her clumsiness in handling her treasures, though really because of nervous tension, Eben started violently, and the box which he held fell from his quaking hands, scattering papers in a confused litter about the floor.

Instantly Tollman was on all fours retrieving, and the undignified posture had the advantage of serving to conceal the wild terror of his face; a terror such as may stamp itself upon the features of a man who cannot swim and who has twice gone down.

As he searched in a feverish panic, pretending an impartial interest in the generality of scattered documents, Eben was tortured by the knowledge that Stuart and Conscience were searching, too, and a conviction that if either of them found that envelope first, the legend "S. F. & C. W." would prove sufficiently illuminating to require an accounting.

Finally the elder man straightened up, and stood panting. The vital package was still unfound. Stuart Farquaharson tossed a sheaf of ancient bill receipts across the desk with the casual comment, "Well, that seems to be the crop."

Over the harrowed visage of the host swept an almost felicitous wave of relief and then, as abruptly, his cheeks changed color again, fading to an ashen pallor tinged with greenish sickliness. In his eyes the light appeared to die. He licked his lips and a palsy shook him like a violent chill. The Virginian's eyes were still searching the floor, but his left hand,--the uninjured one--rested lightly on the table, and as Mr.

Tollman looked he saw that the fingers were spread upon a yellowed envelope, of which the exposed surface bore the clearly legible inscription "S. F. & C. W."

And while the victim of terror stood, transfixed with his premonition of crisis, Farquaharson also glanced down and, seeing the envelope, added: "No--here's one more. It must have been lying here all the time."

CHAPTER XXVIII

To Tollman's eyes familiar with content and superscription, it was all glaringly conspicuous. The initials seemed to stand out like headlines, but Farquaharson was without suspicion and he saw only one more paper in which his interest was most perfunctory. The whole issue had narrowed now, Eben realized with a tension of fear which brought out sweat beads on the pasty white of his face, to the hairbreadth narrowness of one question. Would Stuart see the initials or would they escape his notice?

But the Virginian was not yet broken to the habit of being a cripple. He could not remember that he must avoid the effort to use the right hand which he had always used. Now he reached down and picked up the envelope--still with the lettered surface turned up to sight--and rapping still swollen knuckles on the desk top, he let the envelope fall just as he raised it.

But this time it fell face down--and the perilous letters lay hidden.

Eben grabbed forward with such precipitate haste that Farquaharson looked up in astonishment and for the first time recognized something of the agitation which shook the other: the spasmodic panting of his breath and the outstanding arteries on his temples. "Why, you are ill, man!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter with you?"

Tollman made a supreme effort to rally his powers of self-control. The envelope lay between them--but out of his own reach and that spelled the wavering balance of suspense.

"This stooping after papers seems to have brought on a touch of vertigo," he explained and he had the sense, costly in self-restraint, to let his eagerly outstretched hand drop at his side, "Conscience, I think I'll have a little brandy."

After his wife had gone he spoke again.

"Didn't you--have another paper, Stuart?" The question came casually from the chair into which he had collapsed. "I might as well put it with the rest while I'm waiting for the brandy."

"Yes, I'd forgotten it. Here it is," and the younger man handed back the envelope--this time using his left hand.

Once more Tollman's luck had held good.

Later in the analysis of retrospect Stuart began to wonder at his host's strange behavior until of idle speculation suspicion was born, but as to that circumstance he held his counsel.

The last summer month brings to the Cape the August twister and the August tide. The twister seems to be a simultaneous rushing in of tornado-like winds from every quarter and a whirling bluster of elements gone mad. And in that month the high tide is the highest in the year.

For the household of Eben Tollman as well as for the weather the season seemed charged with the unquiet influences of equinox.

In the older man himself the currents of hatred and jealousy were rising to a danger line of unbalanced deviltry and as for the two who still responded to the nameless yet invincible clarion of youth, the elements of passion and insurgency were awake, ready for an August twister and an August tide.

Then there befell the household a series of coincidental labor problems that left them all at once without servants. The chauffeur, who hated his employer, was summarily discharged for drunken insolence. The cook was taken dangerously ill and her sister, the housemaid, went with her to her home at Provincetown. The gardener and outside man alone remained on duty and since both of these came and went from a distance, Conscience and Stuart found themselves promoted to kitchen and pantry.

A day of bluster and storm had ended in a sunset of brilliant color, which dyed the cloud-ramparted west with a victorious pageantry of crimson and gold. The night would be different, for in the east the moon, just climbing over the horizon, was a disc of pale tranquillity dominating a symphony of blue and silver.

In the pantry, with windows giving to the east and west, Conscience was washing dishes and Stuart, whose right hand was once more usable, stood nearby drying them. Pausing, with her eyes first on the changing fires of the west and then on the soft nocturne of the east, the woman spoke softly: