"But, dear—" he spoke eagerly, ready to sacrifice without combat even his cherished reverence for the unchanging order of his fathers: even his aversion to the wasting of money—"I haven't told you before because I wanted to surprise you. I've let all that wait until you should be here to direct it. I wanted the renovated house, like the renovated man, to bear the stamp of your designing."
The wife's eyes flashed with surprise and apparent pleasure. "Do you really mean it?" she exclaimed. "Do you really mean that I may do what I like with the place?"
"Yes, yes—" he hastened to assure her. "You are in supreme command here. You have carte blanche."
For a while she did not speak, but when she did her voice was very soft. "Eben," she said almost falteringly, "you give me everything—and I give you so little."
A few minutes later, with vast relief, he watched her go through the door, then collapsed, a limp creature, into the chair by the table, his arms going out and sweeping the papers into a pile close to his body. His face, relaxed from the strain of dissembling, looked old and his jaw sagged.
But before he had sufficiently recovered to investigate the documents he heard a rustle and looked around. Conscience was standing in the door—and he feared that even the slouch of his shoulders, seen from behind, might have been dangerously revealing. His wife's level tone as she spoke, no less than her words, intensified his conviction of defeat.
"The note that I asked you to mail to Stuart Farquaharson—that night when he left—never reached him."
So she had, after all, been playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse! She had left the room, only to return and confront him when he was unmanned. Something of cornered desperation came into his eyes, but with a final instinct of precaution he managed to assume a remnant of poise.
"Never reached him? That seems hardly possible."
She nodded. "Yes; doesn't it? I asked you at the time if you were certain you had mailed it. Do you remember?"