He dressed slowly, all that Caroline had said, and he thought, tangling and disentangling deliberately in his mind.  Mrs. Winscombe ... thinking there were no presentable men in the Provinces.  His hand strayed in the direction of a quince-coloured satin coat; but he chose instead a commonplace, dun affair with pewter buttons, and carelessly settled his shoulders in an unremarkable waistcoat.  Then, although he could hear a concerted stir of voices below that announced impending supper, he slipped into a chair for half a pipe.  He was indifferent, not diffident, and there was no hesitation in the manner in which he finally approached the company seated at supper.  His place was, as usual, at his mother’s side; but opposite him where Myrtle usually sat was a rigid, high shouldered man in mulberry and silver, jewelled buckles, and a full, powdered wig.  He had thin, dark cheeks, a heavy nose above a firm mouth with a satirical droop, and small, unpleasantly penetrating eyes.  An expression of general malice was, however, corrected by a high and serene brow.

“Mr. Winscombe,” Howat Penny’s mother said, “my son.”  The former bowed with formal civility, but gave a baffling effect of mockery which, Howat discovered, enveloped practically every movement and speech.  He was, he said, enchanted to meet Mr. Penny; and that extravagant expression, delivered in a slightly harsh, negligent voice, heightened the impression of a personality strong and cold; a being as obdurate as an iron bar masquerading in coloured satin and formulating pretty phrases like the sheen on the surface of a deep November pool.  Gilbert Penny echoed the introduction at the other end of the table.

Howat saw, in the yellow candlelight, a woman not, he decided, any better looking than Caroline, in an extremely low cut gown of scarlet, with a rigid girdle of saffron brocade, a fluted tulle ruff tied with a scarlet string about a long, slim neck, and a cap of sheer cambric with a knot of black ribbons.  Her eyes were widely opened and dark, her nose short, and her mouth full and petulant.  She, too, was conventionally adequate; but her insincerity was clearer than her husband’s, it was pronounced quickly, in an impertinent and musical voice, without the slightest pretence of the injection of any interest.  Howat Penny felt, in a manner which he was unable to place, that she vaguely resembled himself; perhaps it lay in her eyebrows slanting slightly toward the temples; but it was vaguer, more elusive, than that.

He considered it idly, through the course of supper.  At intervals he heard her voice, a little, high-pitched laugh with a curious, underlying flatness:  not of tone, her modulations were delicate and exact; but deeper.  Again he was dimly conscious of an aspect of her which eluded every effort to fix and define.  He could not even comprehend his dwelling upon the immaterial traits of a strange and indifferent woman; he was at a loss to understand how such inquiries assailed him.  He grew, finally, annoyed, and shut his mind to any further consideration of her.