"Yes, of course it is me," he snapped crossly. "What on earth are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"
Scrambling to her feet she answered anxiously, "I—I am just painting. But why are you here?"
"Let's go into the house and I will tell you," he said. "I have come home, Violet!"
Half an hour later Ferdinand Walbridge sat in the kitchen of "Happy House," drinking tea and eating scrambled eggs—without tomatoes. He had on a velvet jacket of Paul's, for he was cold, and the glass out of which he had drunk a stiff brandy and soda still stood on the table. Beside him sat his wife, her face full of troubled sympathy.
"Enough salt?" she asked presently.
He nodded. "The food at the Rosewarne is beastly, it has played the very deuce with my digestion——"
"Did you have hot water every morning?"
"No, it was luke warm half the time and made me feel sick."
He went on eating in silence, and she studied his face. That he should look ill, and unhappy, did not, after what he had told her, surprise her much; what did strike her was his look of age. She had often seen him when he was ill, but this was the first time that his face not only showed his real age, but looked actually older. The lines in it seemed deeper, and his eyes, under heavy suddenly wrinkled lids, lustreless and watery. He had cried a good deal of course, she reflected pitifully, but never before had his easy tears made his eyes look like that.