“It’s only the commonest charity,” she repeated.  Her attack rapidly veered.  “Howat,” she asked, “do you really dislike Jimmy?” Certainly, he asserted, he—­he disapproved of him ... altogether.  A headstrong young donkey who had made a shocking mess of his life.  He would have to make the best of a bad affair for which no one was to blame but himself.  “It is terrific,” she agreed, almost cheerfully; and he had a vague sense of having, somehow, delivered himself into her hands.  “Perhaps something can still be done,” she said, frowning, increasing the dangers of his position.  He managed, by a stubborn silence, to check further conversation in that direction; hoping, vainly, that James Polder couldn’t come, that Harriet, sensibly, would insist on his accompanying her, or that Byron would solemnly intervene.

Mariana, later displaying a letter, dispelled his wishes.  “It’s been arranged quite easily,” she told him.  “Harriet will go home.  I’d like to be here when he arrives, but I can’t.  You’ll be a dear, Howat, won’t you?” she begged.  “I’m certain James will give you no trouble.  And do send him to bed early.”  At this he grew satirical, and she laughed in an unaccustomed, nervous manner that upset him surprisingly.  Honduras drove her to the station the next morning; and, three days later, deposited James Polder on the worn stone threshold under the climbing rose.

After dinner the younger man faced him squarely across the apricot glow of the lamp in the middle room.  “This is the third time I’ve come here without an invitation from you,” he said directly.  “It was Mariana this last.  I shut my mouth on what I’d once have crammed down your throat, and came like any puppy.  It wasn’t on account of my health, there are miles of quiet country; it wasn’t—­” he hesitated, then went on—­“altogether because of Mariana.  I wanted to watch you closer; I want to find out what you are like inside, so I might understand some—­some other things better.  I can get out if it’s a rank failure.”

Howat issued a polite, general dissent.  “Now, right there,” Polder stated; “you don’t want me; you’d rather I was a thousand miles away, dead.  Well—­why don’t you say so?” He had not the least conception of a decent reticence of address, Howat Penny thought, resentfully, at the discomfort aroused by the young man’s sharp attack.

“Certain amenities,” he observed coldly, “have been accepted as desirable, as obligations for—­” he hesitated, casting about for a phrase that would not too conspicuously exclude James Polder.  “Say it,” the latter burst out rudely, “gentlemen.  And you all stand about with one thing to say and another in your head.”