"However, I'm glad to be back. Did I wake you both up? You seem to have made a short evening of it."

"I haven't been asleep," answered Stuart, and Conscience added: "Nor I."

"I noticed," went on the husband evenly, "that the lower floor was dark, as I came up ... your window, too, Stuart, when I first saw it."

"You must have come very slowly," replied the younger man with a calmness that struck the other as the acme of effrontery. "My light has been burning for ten minutes ... but I don't make out how you saw my window if you came from the front of the house."

Eben winced a little, but his smile only became more urbane.

"Quite true, my boy. You see I tried my latch key first, and finding the house dark, I sought to avoid disturbing the sleepers. I went to the back door and the side door. Finally I knocked. Since neither of you was asleep it's all right."

"Perhaps after being in the fog so long," Conscience suggested, "a little brandy might be advisable," but Eben Tollman laughed.

"My dear, for some unaccountable reason, I feel as if I'd been away from home as long as Enoch Arden--and I'm much happier to be back. I am in the mood for celebration. There's a bottle of old Madeira in the pantry.

I don't think a little of it will harm any of us ... and I'm going to dissipate even farther. I'm going to smoke a cigar." Smoking a cigar was with Eben a rite which occurred with the frequency of a Christmas or a Thanksgiving dinner.

Something youthful had come into his manner, and Farquaharson, in spite of his misery, laughed.

"I'm afraid I'm hardly dressed for a party," he demurred, but Eben answered in a tone of aggrieved hospitality.

"My dear fellow, you are much more fully dressed than when you go bathing; both of you--and how can I celebrate alone?" So Stuart smilingly asserted:

"All right. We'll have a toast in your excellent Madeira to the return of Enoch Arden."

Possibly his voice held a meaning less light than his words. Perhaps he was thinking of it as a toast to his own departure into exile, but to Eben it had the ring of a sneer, as though the words "too late" had been added.

Conscience disappeared to return shortly with a tray containing cold meat and bread, and to her husband she said: "Eben, I can't find the famous Madeira. Where is it?"

He rose, and announced that he would bring it at once, disappearing beyond the swinging door of the pantry.

While he was absent, Conscience turned to the man in the bath robe. A smile half of amusement and half of self-accusation tilted the corners of her lips.

"You see," she said thoughtfully, "I've just let myself think of him as elderly until, to me, he's become elderly. Yet to-night he's younger than either of us, isn't he?"

"To-night neither one of us is very young, dear," he replied with a wry smile.

In the pantry Eben Tollman poured three glasses of Madeira, and placed them on a tray carefully noting their relative positions. With fingers that trembled violently for a moment Eben grew as abruptly steady; he drew from his waistcoat pocket a small envelope such as druggists use, and into two of the glasses he divided its supply of small tablets.

"Ebbett said they were tasteless and readily soluble," he reminded himself. "And that the amount should be enough for a dog or a man."

Then he patted his breast pocket, where lay an envelope yellowed with age, bearing the legend "S. F. & C. W."

Of that he meant also to make use later.

CHAPTER XXXII

The living-room held a glow of mellow light, but as Eben returned with the three brimming glasses, Conscience touched a button which darkened the wall sconces and left only the large lamp on the table, where she had placed her tray.

"Inasmuch as two members of this party are more or less gauzily appareled," she suggested, "it doesn't seem to be necessary to make an illumination of it."

Tollman, with a seeming of absent-mindedness set down his light burden on a small side table, somewhat remote, but it was with no want of certainty that he marked the relative positions of its contents. One glass was alone at the edge of the silver platter. Two others were closer together at the center.

Now he came over, empty-handed, and as he regarded the larger tray of food, he rubbed his palms appreciatively with a convincing relish.

"You have prepared a feast for the traveler on very short notice," he smilingly attested while inwardly and more grimly he added in apposition--"'a table in the presence of mine enemies!'"

His wife modestly disclaimed credit. "You are easy to please, Eben.

There's only beef sandwiches and fruit and a little cake. Would you like me to make you some coffee?"

Eben raised his hand with a gesture of refusal. "No, indeed, I am more than satisfied--unless you want it yourself."

But she shook her head, "It would keep me awake. I haven't been sleeping well of late." This announcement of insomnia--twin sister to a troubled conscience, he thought--was a somewhat bold skirting of admission, but his words were reassuring.

"The Madeira is well timed then. A glass before bedtime should be soothing." Still standing, he bit into one of the beef sandwiches, and observed with an approach to the whimsy of gayety: "I've never been quite clear in my own mind as to what was meant by the stalled ox of scriptural fame and I've always subscribed to the text 'better a dinner of herbs where love is'--but I'm bound to say, it's very gratifying to have the stalled ox and the love as well."

For Farquaharson his air of celebration held an irony which accentuated his own exclusion and made participation difficult. He was the exile at the feast.

Eben who, alone of the three, had not seated himself wandered about with the restless volubility of a peripatetic philosopher, though his humor was genial beyond its custom. At last with the air of one too engaged with his own conversation to heed details of courtesy he took up his glass and sipped from it thoughtfully.

"Even if this is my own wine," he commented, "I can't withhold commendation. I sometimes think that only the very abstemious man can truly appreciate a good vintage. For him it is an undulled pleasure of the palate."

Stuart Farquaharson at last found it possible to laugh.

"I for one can't dispute the statement," he confessed. "I haven't tasted it yet--though I understood that both Conscience and I were invited."

"A thousand pardons!" exclaimed the host, shamefacedly. "I am a poor sort of Ganymede--drinking alone and leaving my guests unserved!"

He set down his own glass, and with tardy solicitude proffered to them the remaining two.

"Here's to the homecoming," he proposed with a jauntiness which sat upon him like foreign raiment as he took up his own wine again and Stuart, with a dolorous smile, suggested: "Why not include me in the toast, Eben? The arrival--and the departure."

"Ah," demurred the elder man easily. "But that's not to be celebrated, my boy. For us that is a misfortune."

The two men emptied and put down their glasses--and lighted cigars while Conscience sat thoughtfully, making slower work of her Madeira.

"And now shall we have a little music?" inquired the husband, while the younger man's face darkened, and Conscience said rather hastily:

"Not this evening, please, Eben. We've rather overworked the phonograph of late."

"Not even 'The Beautiful Night of Love'?" The inquiry held an insistent shade of regret.

But Eben, as his glance went shiftily to the face of the clock, was as steady and as cool as one may become under the temporary keying of a repressed and brain-wrecking excitement. To this inflexible composure he must hold until a certain moment arrived, and he must time himself to its coming with a perfection of nicety.

"At last, Eben," Farquaharson testified when a brief silence had fallen on the trio, "I am ready to praise your wine. I feel the glow in my veins and the glow is insidiously grateful."