He sat with chin on breast and sombre eyes until his mother laid her hand on his shoulder.  “Howat,” she protested, “you are too glum for the comfort of any one near you.  I think you must make a pose of being black.  I’d almost called one of the servants to fiddle in your ear.”

Howat smiled at her; he returned slowly to the actual, the particular.  Mr. Winscombe had pushed back his chair, excusing himself in the pressure of necessary preparations.  His wife disappeared with him, leaving behind the echo of a discussion about Cecco, the Italian servant.  The women followed, with David at Myrtle’s shoulder, leaving Howat and Gilbert Penny.

The latter was still a handsome man, with his own hair silvered on a ruddy countenance, and a careful taste in clothes.  His nose was predominant, with a wide-cleft mouth above a square chin.  “I had thought,” he said deliberately, “that you were employed in the counting house, but Schwar tells me that it has been a week since you were seen there.”  He raised a broad hand to silence Howat’s reply.  “While I can afford to keep you merely at hunting, the result to the table is so meagre that I’m not justified.  There is no St. James here, in Pennsylvania, no gentlemen supported by the Crown for the purpose of amusement.  You will have to sail for England if you expect that sort of thing.”  He rose, “You owe an intelligent interest in Myrtle Forge, to your sisters and mother, toward all that I have accomplished.  It’s a rich property, and it’s growing bigger.  Already young Forsythe has a list of improvements to be instituted at the Furnace—­clerks and a manager and new system for carrying on the blast.”

“I’m not an iron man,” Howat Penny told him, “I’m not a clerk.  David can take all that over for you, particularly if he marries one of the girls.”

“What are you?” the elder demanded sharply.

“You ought to know.  You explained it fully enough to the Winscombes.”

“If it wasn’t for that you’d have been dumping slag five years ago.  What I hoped was that with maturity some sense of obligation would be born into you.  What is this pretended affection for your mother worth if you are unwilling to conserve, make safe, her future, in case I die?” All that his father said was logical, just; but it only brought him a renewed sense of his impotence before very old and implacable inner forces.

“I’ll try again,” he briefly agreed.  “But I warn you, it will do little good.  There is no pretence in the affection you spoke of, but—­but something stronger—­” he gave up as hopeless the effort to explain all that had swept through his mind.

Gilbert Penny abruptly left the room.