Howat Penny had never seen a more ill-ordered youth, and he experienced an increasing difficulty in keeping a marked asperity from his speech and conduct.  Eliza Provost shortly came down, and the three strolled out into the ruddy light of late afternoon.  Howat Penny consumed a long time dressing for the evening; and, in the end, irritably summoned Rudolph.  “I can’t get these damned studs in,” he complained; “whatever do you suppose women use for starch now?” Rudolph dexterously fixed the emeralds, then held the black silk waistcoat.  “And coats won’t hang for a bawbee,” he went on.  “Gentlemen like Gary Dilkes used to go regularly to London, spring and fall, for their things.  No doubt then about a man of breeding.  You didn’t see the other kind around.  Wouldn’t have ’em.”  Rudolph murmured consolingly.  “Sat in the pit but never got into the boxes,” his voice grew thin, querulous.  “I’m moving along, Rudolph,” he admitted suddenly; “the manners, and, by thunder, the music too, don’t suit me any more.  Give me the old Academy days in Irving Place.”  He hummed a bar from Ernani.

Through dinner he maintained a severe silence, listening with a frowning disapproval to Eliza Provost’s tranquil, subversive utterances.  Howat Penny couldn’t think what her father was about, permitting her to harangue loafers by the streets and saloons.  She was, in a cold way—­she had Peter Jannan Provost’s curious grey colouring—­a handsome piece of a girl, too.  “A fine figger,” he told himself.

Later, Mariana and James Polder had gone out on the porch, he faced with reluctance the task of furnishing her with entertainment; but, to his extreme relief, she procured a leather portfolio, and addressed herself to a sheaf of papers.  But that, in itself, was a peculiar way for a young woman to spend an evening.  She would have done it, he felt, if he had been half his actual age.  God help the man with a fancy for her!  Charming visions were woven on his memory from the fading skeins of the past—­a ride in a dilapidated, public fiacre after a masked ball in Paris ... at dawn.  Confetti tangled in coppery hair, a wilful mouth, fragrantly painted, and phantomlike swans on a black lake.  His silk hat had been telescoped in the process of smacking a Frenchman’s eye.  Perhaps, they had told each other, there would be cards later in the 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.