"It's a business matter but one that involves a duty to my associates. I don't see how I can ignore it or decline to go."
"But why shouldn't you go?" inquired his wife, and immediately Eben replied.
"Ordinarily I should, but Stuart says he must leave for New York to-day and there are no servants on the place. You can't stay here absolutely alone."
"I shall be all right," she declared, but her husband raised his hands in a gesture of reasonable protest.
"I couldn't think of it," he insisted. "Why, it's a half-mile to the nearest house. It wouldn't do."
Then with an urgency of manner he turned to Farquaharson.
"Stuart, I dislike greatly to ask you to change your plans—but you realize the situation. Can't you put off leaving until to-morrow?"
The younger man turned slowly and his gaze was disconcertingly piercing, as he asked, "Don't you regard that as a somewhat unconventional suggestion—leaving Conscience here with no one but me? What of Dame Grundy?"
Eben only laughed and arched his brows in amusement.
"Why, my dear boy, you're a member of the family, aren't you? Such a question is the height of absurdity."