“Look here, Mariana,” he proclaimed, “I won’t have any nonsense, do you understand?”

“We can keep a photograph of Harriet on the table.”

James Polder entered, and put a temporary end to his determined speech.  When the former saw Mariana his shameless pleasure, Howat thought, was beyond credence.  Positively neither of them paid any more attention to him than they did to Rudolph.  His irritation gave place to a deeper realization that an impossible situation threatened.  There was nothing, obviously, that he could do to-day; but he would speak seriously to Mariana to-morrow; one or both of them would have to leave Shadrach.  This determination took the present weight from his conscience; and, pottering about small concerns of his own, he ignored them comfortably.

They appeared late, dirty and hot, for dinner; and it was eight o’clock before Mariana came down in a gown like a white-petalled flower.  She wore no rings, but about her throat was a necklace of old-fashioned seed pearls in loops and rosettes.  “It’s family,” she told them; “it belonged to Caroline Penny.  And she married a Quaker, too; a David Forsythe.”  She stopped suddenly, and Howat Penny recalled the tradition that Caroline Penny, Gilbert’s daughter, had appropriated her sister Myrtle’s suitor.  Mariana favoured him with a fleet glance, the quiver of a reprehensible wink.  He glared back at her choking with suppressed wrath.  “I have a wonderful idea for to-morrow,” she proceeded tranquilly; “we’ll take lunch, and leave Honduras, and go to Myrtle Forge for the day.”

Her design was unfolded so rapidly, her directions to Rudolph so explicit, that he had no opportunity to oppose his plan of sending her away in the morning; and his impotence committed him to her suggestion.  She could go in the evening almost as well.  After dinner he rattled the dominoes significantly, but Mariana, smiling at him absently, went through the room and out upon the porch.  Polder, with an obscure sentence, followed her.  A soft rain sounded on the porch roof; but there was no wind; the night was warm.

Howat glanced at his watch, after a period of restful ease, and saw that it was past ten.  He moved resolutely outside.  Mariana was banked with cushions in the canvas swing, and Polder sat with his body extended, his hands clasped behind his head, in a gloomy revery.  The night, apparently, had robbed her countenance of any bloom; more than once in the past year Howat had seen her stamped with the premonitory scarring of time.  Polder rose as he approached, and Mariana struggled upright.

“Good night,” she said ungraciously, to them both, and flickered away through the dark.  James Polder was savagely biting his lips; his hands, the elder saw, were clenched.  “Your wife,” Howat proceeded, “how is she?” Polder gazed at him stonily, without reply.  “I asked after your wife,” Howat repeated irritably.  “No,” the other at last said, “you reminded me of her.  I suppose you are right.”  He turned and walked abruptly from the porch, into the slowly dropping rain.