day, an affair of honour. He forgot what, exactly, had happened; but
there had been no duel.

He looked up with a sudden concern, as if his thoughts might have been
clear to Eliza Provost, in irreproachable evening dress and shell rimmed
glasses, intent on statistical pages. Mariana and James Polder appeared;
the former, Howat Penny thought, disturbed. Polder's intense countenance
was sombre, his brow corrugated. Mariana, accompanied by Eliza, soon
after went up; and left the two men facing each other across a neutral
silence. "You manufacture steel, I believe," the elder finally stated.

"The Company does," Polder replied more exactly. "I've been in the open
hearth since I left school," he went on; "it was born in me, I've never
thought of anything else." His tone grew sharp, as if it might occur to
the other to contradict the legitimacy of his pursuit. "I have done well
enough, too," he said pridefully. "Most of them come on from college. I
went from shovelling slag in the pit, the crane, to second helper and
melter; they gave me the furnace after a year and now I am foreman. It
will be better still if a reorganization goes through. Not many men have
a chance at the superintendent's office under thirty-five."

"That is very admirable," Howat Penny said formally. He wondered,
privately, at the far channel into which the original Penny ability had
flowed. There could be no doubt, however objectionable, that James
Polder was the present repository of the family tradition. He had had it
from the source; and the iron had not, apparently, been corroded by
tainted blood. He was forced to admit that a coarser strain had,
perhaps, lent it endurance. All this failed to detract from his initial
dislike of young Polder. There was a lack of breeding in the manner in
which he sat in his chair, thrust forward on its edge, in his arrogant
proclamation of ability, success. James Polder was anxious, he realized,
to impress him, Howat Penny, with the fact that he was not negligible.
Such things were utterly unimportant to him. He was unable to justify,
or even explain to himself, his standards of judgment. They were not
founded on admirable conduct, on achievement, what was known as solid
worth; but on vague accents, intuitive attitudes of mind visible in a
hundred trivial, even absurd, signs. The "right things" were more
indispensable to him than the sublimest attributes.

On the following morning Mariana, Eliza and Polder disappeare