ure her. "I can look
after that matter after lunch. I expect a telephone call regarding it at
one, which can reach me in the hotel dining-room--unless you prefer
being alone."

But Conscience laughed.

"Prefer being alone? Why should I? It's something to have a man along
who's willing to be bored and carry parcels."

As they entered the dining-room promptly on the hour, Conscience saw in
the doorway the back and shoulders of a man who seemed to be searching
the place for an acquaintance. In the bearing and erectness of the
figure was something so familiar that it stabbed her with a sharp
vividness of memory. She started and just then the man turned and she
found herself face to face with Stuart Farquaharson.

The Virginian stepped promptly forward with hand extended and a smile of
greeting, but for the moment Conscience neither advanced nor lifted her
hand. She stood unmoving and wide-eyed as if she had seen a ghost and
her cheeks went deadly pale.

"I only got your note a little while ago," he explained easily. "I am
such a new hand at this theatrical game that I haven't learned yet to
expect mail in the stage-door box. I hope I'm not inexcusably late."

But the woman still stood mystified and startled. When she did speak it
was to repeat blankly, "My note? What note?"

Tollman had been standing a pace to the rear and his gaze, for all its
schooling, was one of tense appraisal.

Now he smilingly interposed, "Let me explain, Mr. Farquaharson, I took
the liberty of couching my invitation in my wife's name because I knew
she shared my wish to have you with us--but for her I reserved the
pleasure of a complete surprise."

There was for an instant an awkward tableau of embarrassment. A flush of
instinctive anger rose to Farquaharson's temples. He had come because he
thought Conscience wished to show him that she was happy and he
forgiven. Now it appeared that her wishes had not been consulted, and
she stood there with an expression almost stricken. Tollman had been
impertinent--if nothing worse.

To Eben Tollman it was all quite clear. Here was a guilty pair too
confounded for immediate recovery. Farquaharson, being warned, was
attempting to carry it off smoothly enough for both.

But immediately the color swept back into the woman's face and
cordiality came to her lips and eyes. Taking the Virginian's hand she
smiled also on her husband. The very fact that Eben did not realize her
reasons for dreading such an