he others had been there; unconsciously he had been aware of
them, even counted on them. Now they had vanished.

Caroline and Myrtle, bringing David with them again, returned on the
following morning. It seemed to Howat that the former was almost lovely;
she had a gayer sparkle, a clearer colour, than he had ever seen her
possess before. On the other hand, Myrtle was dull; the dress, it
seemed, had not been the unqualified success she had hoped for.
Something newer had arrived in the meantime from London. Ludowika, it
developed, had one of the later sacques in her boxes; but that, she said
indifferently, must be quite dead now. It seemed to Howat that she too
regarded Myrtle without enthusiasm. Ludowika and Myrtle had had very
little to say to each other; Myrtle studied Mrs. Winscombe's apparel
with a keen, even belligerent, eye; the other patronized the girl in a
species of half absent instruction.

The sky was flawless, leaden blue; the sunlight fell in an enveloping
flood over the countryside, but it was pale, without warmth. There was
no wind, not a leaf turned on the trees--a sinuous sheeting of the
country-side like red-gold armour. But Howat knew that at the first stir
of air the leaves would be in stricken flight, the autumn accomplished.
Caroline dragged him impetuously down into the garden, among the brown,
varnished stems of the withered roses, the sere, dead ranks of scarlet
sage. "He hugged me," she told him; "I was quite breathless. It was in a
hall, dark; but he didn't say anything. What do you think?" There was
nothing definite that he might express; and he patted her shoulder. He
had a new kinship with Caroline; Howat now understood her tempest of
feeling, concealed beneath her commonplace daily aspect.

Myrtle and David joined them, and he left, resumed his place at the high
desk in the counting house. Strangely his energy of being communicated
itself to the prosaic work before him. It was, he suddenly felt,
important for him to master the processes of Myrtle Forge; it would not
do for him to remain merely irresponsible, a juvenile appendage to the
Penny iron. He would need all the position, the weight, he could assume;
and money of his own. He found a savage pleasure in recording every
detail put before him. He compared the value of pig metal, the cost of
charcoal, wages, with the return of the blooms and anconies they shipped
to England. Howat experienced his father's indignation at the manner in
w