nd complete. He preferred the contained
artistry of such music to the cruder, more popular and moral, sounds.

Early in the afternoon she went to her room, although Honduras had no
occasion to go to the station for considerably more than an hour,
explaining that she must dress. Howat Penny sat with his palms on his
white flannelled knees, revolving, now, himself in the light of his
aspirations for Mariana. He wondered if, in the absence of any sympathy
for the mass of sentiment and living, he was blind, too, to her greatest
possibilities; if, in short, he was a vicious influence. Perhaps, as the
old were said to do, he had hardened into a narrow and erroneous
conception of values. Such doubts were both disturbing and unusual;
ordinarily he never hesitated in the exact expression of his vigorously
held opinions and prejudices; he seldom relaxed the critical elevation
of his standards. He was, he thought contemptuously, growing soft;
senility was diluting his fibre, blurring his inner vision.

Nothing of this was visible as he rose on Mariana's reappearance; there
was not a line relaxed; his handsome, dark profile was as pridefully
clear as if it had been stamped on a bronze coin. Mariana wore, simply,
blue, with an amber veiling of tulle about her shoulders, and a short
skirt that gave her a marked youthful aspect. She seemed ill at ease;
and avoided his gaze, hurrying out to meet the motor as it noisily
turned sharply in at the door. Howat Penny heard Eliza Provost's short,
impatient enunciation, and a rapid, masculine utterance. Eliza entered,
a girl with a decided, evenly pale face and brown eyes, in a severe
black linen suit and a small hat, and extended a direct hand, a slightly
smiling greeting. Mariana followed, for a moment filling the doorway.
"We'll go up, Eliza," she said, moving with the other to the stair, a
few feet distant. A man followed into the house, and Mariana half turned
on the bottom step. "Howat," she proceeded hurriedly, "this is James
Polder." Then she ascended with Eliza Provost.

An expression of amazement, deepening almost to dismay, was momentarily
visible on Howat Penny's countenance. His face felt hot, and there was
an uncomfortable pressure in his throat, such as might come from shock.
Surely Mariana wouldn't ... without warning him--! He was conscious of
the necessity, facing a tall, spare young man with an intent expression,
of a polite phrase; and he articulated an adequate something