wo women were identical. Their
dresses were largely similar--Amity's a dun, Gilda Penny's grey, moire
silk, high with a tight lace collar, and bands of jet trimming from
shoulder to waist, there spreading over crinoline to the floor. Lace
fell about their square, capable hands, and Gilda wore broad, locked
bracelets checked in black and gold.

Sherry, in blue cut decanters stoppered with gilt, gave place to port.
An epergne of glass and burnished ormolu, in the form of supporting oak
leaves, with numerous sockets for candles, was set, filled with fruit,
in the centre of the table; silver lustre plates were laid; but Jasper
Penny heedlessly fingered the stem of a wine glass. He said suddenly,
"I'm going to the city this afternoon."

"Is it safe yet?" his mother queried doubtfully. "Hadn't you better wait
till to-morrow, when you can drive easily, or without stopping at a
tavern?"

He looked up impatiently. "I shall go by the railroad," he stated
decisively. "Can't you understand that, with the future of iron almost
dependent on steam, it is the commonest foresight for me to patronize
such customers as the Columbia Railway! I have no intention of adding to
the ignorant prejudice against improved methods of travelling."

"There's your arm," she insisted with spirit.

"An untried engine. The Hecla works along smoothly at twenty miles an
hour." Amity cast a glance of swift appeal at her sister, but Gilda
Penny persisted. "Ungodly," was the term she selected. Jasper ignored
her. He had decided to straighten the tangled affair of Eunice at once;
he would see Essie that evening, arrive at an understanding about the
child's future. It would be even more difficult to terminate his
connection with Essie herself. That, he now recognised, was his main
desire. The affair had actually died before Phebe; but its onerous
consequences remained, blighting the future.

The future! It was that, he now discovered, which occupied him, rather
than the past. A new need had become apparent, a restless desire
analogous to the urge of seeking youth. Jasper Penny was aware of a
great dissatisfaction, a vast emptiness, in his existence; he had a
feeling of waste growing out of the sense of hurrying years. Somehow,
obscurely, he had been cheated. He almost envied the commonality of men,
not, like himself, black Pennys, impatient of assuaging relationships
and beliefs. Yet this, too, turned into another phase of his
inheritance--his need was no