Above, Howat slowly made his preparations for retiring, infinitely weary.  Waking problems fell from him like a leaden weight into the sea of unconsciousness.  He was relieved, at breakfast, to see Mariana come down in a hat, with the jacket of her suit on an arm.  He waited for her to indicate the train by which she was leaving, so that he could tell Honduras to have the motor ready; but she sat around in a dragging silence.  Polder walked up and down the room in which they were gathered.  Howat wished he would stop his clattering movement.  An expression of ill-nature deepened in Mariana; she looked her ugliest; and James Polder was perceptibly fogged from a lack of sleep.  Finally he said: 

“Look here, we can’t go on like this.”  He stopped in front of Mariana, with a quivering face.  She raised her eyebrows.  “Come outside,” he begged.  “What’s the use?” she replied; but, at the same time, she rose.  “Don’t get desperate, Howat,” she said over her shoulder.  “Even I can’t do any more; I can only take my shamelessness back to Andalusia.”  Polder held open the screen door; and as, without her jacket, she went out, Howat Penny had a final glimpse of the man bending at her side.  Like two fish in a net, he thought ungraciously.  He was worn out by their infernal flopping.  With a determined movement of his shoulders, a fixing of his glass, he turned to the accumulation of his papers.

Later he heard the changing gears of a motor.  He thought for a moment that it was Honduras at his own car; then he recognized the stroke of a far heavier engine.  The powerful, ungraceful bulk of an English machine was stopping at his door.  Immediately after he distinguished the slightly harsh, dominating voice of Peter Provost.  The latter entered, followed by Kingsfrere Jannan.  Peter Provost, a member of the New York family and connection of the Jannans, had, since the elder Jannan’s death, charge of the family’s interest in the banking firm of Provost, Jannan and Provost.  He occupied, Howat knew, a position of general advisor to Charlotte and her children.  He was a large man who had never lost the hardness of a famous university career in the football field, with a handsome, cold countenance and spiked, grey moustache.  He shook hands with Howat Penny, and plunged directly into his present purpose.

“Kingsfrere,” he said, “has heard some cheap stuff in the city, principally about that young Polder married last fall.  Personally, I laughed at it, but Charlotte seemed upset.  This Polder’s wife, an actress, has left her husband, and gone back to the stage because—­so Byron asserted; you know Byron—­Mariana had broken up their home.”

“Old Polder said just that,” Kingsfrere affirmed.  “And that wasn’t all—­he added that Mariana was out here with the fellow.”

Provost laughed.

“Well,” Howat Penny replied, “James Polder is staying at Shadrach.  He was asked here because his health was threatening.  He had two weeks leave; and, although I wasn’t really anxious, I said he might recuperate with me.”