d from Shadrach,
and the carriage of the blooms."

"I don't understand any of that," she announced.

"It probably wouldn't interest you; the pig's the iron cast at the
furnace. It's worked in the forges, and hammered into blooms and
anconies, chunks or stout bars of wrought iron. We do better than two
tons a week." The sound of a short, jarring blow rose from the Forge, it
was repeated, became a continuous part of the serene noon. "That's the
hammer now," he explained. "It goes usually all day and most nights.
We're used to it, don't hear it; but strangers complain."

"Mr. Forsythe said your father was an Ironmaster, one of the biggest in
the Province, and I suppose you'll become that too." She gazed about at
the hills, sheeted in scarlet and yellow, at the wide sunny hollow that
held Myrtle Forge. "Here," she added in a totally unexpected accent of
feeling, "it is very beautiful, very big. I thought all the world was
like St. James or Versailles. I've never been to Poland, my mother's
family came from there to Paris, but I'm told they have forests and such
things, too. This is different from Annapolis, that is only an echo of
London, but here--" she gazed far beyond him into the profound noon.

He recovered slowly from the surprise of her unlooked for speech,
attitude. Howat studied her frankly, leaning forward with his elbows on
his knees. Her discontent was paramount. It was deeper than he had
supposed; like his there were disturbing qualities in her blood,
qualities at a variance with the obvious part of her being. A sense of
profound intimacy with her pervaded him.

"This," she continued, "is like a cure at a Bath, a great bath of air
and light. I should like to stay, I think.... Are you content?"

"It always seemed crowded to me," he admitted. "Usually I get as far
away as possible, into the woods, the real wilderness. But you heard my
father last night--I'm a black Penny, a solitary, dark lot. You couldn't
judge from what I might feel."

"Your father and you are not sympathetic," she judged acutely. "He is
practical, solid; but it isn't easy to say, even with an explanation,
what you are. In London--but I'm sick of London. Myrtle Forge. It's
appalling at night. I'd like to go into the real wilderness, leave off
my hoops and stays, and bathe in a stream; a water nymph and you ... but
that's only Watteau again, with a cicisbeo holding my shift and
stockings. In London you'd be that, a lady's servant of love;