of the wall before him was filled by a white panelled fireplace, the mantel close against the ceiling; and on the other side of a doorway, through which he could see Rudolph noiselessly preparing the dinner table, was a swan-like sofa, in olive wood and pale yellow satin, from the Venice of the ottocento.  At his right, beyond a window, mounted a tall, austere secretary in waxed walnut; and behind him, under the white chair rail, bookcases extended across the width of the room.  Gustavus Hesselius’ portrait of the first Howat Penny hung on a yellow painted wall, his gilt-braided major’s facings still vivid, his dark, perceptible scorn undimmed.  There were, too, framed in oak, a large photograph of Tamagno, as Othello, with a scrawled, cordial message; another of a graceful woman in the Page’s costume of Les Huguenots, signed “Sempre ...  Scalchi”; a water colour drawing by Jan Beers; and a Victorian lithograph in powdery foliage and brick of The Penny Rolling Mills.  Jaffa.  A black-blue rug, from Myrtle Forge, partly covered the broad, oak boards of the floor; and there was a comfortable variety of chairs—­sturdy, painted Dutch, winged Windsors and a slatted Hunterstown rocker.

Howat Penny’s gaze wandered over the familiar furnishing, come to him surviving the generations of his family, or carefully procured for his individual dictates.  A sense of tranquillity, of haven, deepened about him.  “Rudolph,” he inquired, “has Honduras gone for Miss Jannan?”

The man stopped in the doorway, answering in the affirmative.  He was slight, almost fragile, with close, dark hair that stood up across his forehead, and dry, high-coloured cheeks.  Rudolph hesitated, with a handful of silver; and then returned to his task.  Mariana would be along immediately, Howat Penny thought.  He put the album aside and rose, moving toward the door that led without.  He was a slender, erect figure, with little to indicate his age except the almost complete silvering of his hair—­it had, evidently, been black—­and a rigidity of body only apparent to a sharp scrutiny.

A porch followed that length of the house, and doubled the end, where he stood peering into the gathering dusk.  The old willow tree, inhabited by the owls, spread a delicate, blurred silhouette across a darkened vista of shorn wheat fields, filled, in the hollows, with woods; and a lamp glimmered from a farm house on a hill to the left.  His lawn dropped to the public road, the hedged enclosure swimming with fireflies; and beyond he saw the wavering light shafts of his small motor returning from the insignificant flag station on the railroad, a mile distant.

The noise of the engine increased, sliding into a lower gear on the short curve of the driveway; and he met Mariana Jannan at the entrance directly into the dining room.  She insisted, to his renewed discomfort, on kissing him.  “It’s wonderful here, after the city,” she proclaimed; “and I’ve had to be in town three sweltering days.  I’ll dress right away.”