easel with a painstaking, smooth oil painting of a dark man in an
attitude of fixed dignity, and an expensively cased talking machine. The
original, evidently, of the portrait, and a small, rotund woman in mauve
brocade, advanced to meet them. Young Polder said, "My mother and
father. This is Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny."

The latter saw that Mrs. Byron Polder was distinctly nervous; she
twisted the diamonds that occupied a not inconsiderable portion of her
short fingers, and smiled rigidly. "I am very pleased to meet you, Miss
Jannan," she proceeded; "and Mr. Penny too." She held out a hand, then
half withdrew it; but Mariana captured it in her direct palm. "Thank
you," she replied. Byron Polder had a more confident poise; in reality
there was a perceptible chill in his manner. He was a handsome man, with
a cleanly-shaven face, introspective brown eyes and a petulant, drooping
mouth. "You have succeeded in finding your way to my house," he
pronounced enigmatically, gazing at Howat Penny.

It was, Howat thought, just such an ill-bred utterance as he had looked
for from Byron Polder; and he made no effort to mitigate it. He was
conscious of, and resolutely ignored, Mariana's veiled entreaty. "You
don't know my girls," Mrs. Polder continued rapidly. "Here is Isabella,
and Kate will be along for dinner." A tall, bony woman of, perhaps,
thirty-five, in an appalling complication of ribbons and silk, moved
forward with a conventional sentence. In her, Howat's appraisements went
on, virginity had been perpetuated in a captious obsession. They stood
awkwardly silent until James Polder exclaimed, "Good heavens, this isn't
a wax works! Why don't we sit down?" The older woman glanced with a
consuming anxiety at Isabella, and nodded violently toward an exit,
"It's a quarter after seven," she said in a swift aside. Isabella,
correctly disposed on a chair of muffled and mysterious line, resolutely
ignored the appeal.

"I didn't suppose you'd be in the city," she addressed Mariana; "I read
in the paper that you had gone to Watch Hill with Mrs. Ledyard B.
Starr."

"You can see that I'm back," Mariana smiled. "The family, of course, are
at Andalusia, but we have all been in town the past days. I am really
staying with Howat at Shadrach."

"The former location of Shadrach Furnace, I believe," Byron Polder
stated. "Now in ruins." Howat Penny accurately gathered that the other
inferred the collapse not only of the Furnace. He secu