"I wonder who it can be—on such a night?" murmured the woman, and the man suggested:
"Perhaps you had better let me investigate. I imagine some motorist has come to grief in the storm."
When he threw open the door, Eben Tollman stepped in.
The elder man stood for a moment glancing from his guest to his wife, and in that instant of scrutiny whatever of the inquisitorial might have lurked in his eyes left them for a bland suavity. Conscience had hastened forward and her lips were smiling. Farquaharson's eyes dared to meet his own with a level straightforwardness.
But Tollman read into both the smile and the straight-gazing eyes a hypocrisy which superlatively embittered the blood in his veins.
Conscience was standing before him with the exquisite clarity of her complexion unclouded; with the dark pools of her eyes unvexed by the weight of hideous perfidy that should be stifling her heart.
This capping off of infamy with an angelic pretext of innocence was the supreme insult not only to Eben Tollman, outraged husband and man, but to the Righteousness he served, the Righteousness which he now seemed to hear calling trumpet-tongued for the reprisal which was at hand.
"What in the world has happened to you?" he heard his wife exclaiming in an astonished voice, and he laughed as he responded:
"I came back. Haven't you a kiss for me, my dear?" Then when she raised her lips to his an inner voice, which spoke only madness, whispered viciously, "The Judas woman! The unspeakable infamy!"
He explained that he had missed his train, and that when he telephoned to Boston, he learned that the matter could after all be deferred. A man from Chicago had also failed to arrive.