were unremarkable. And her
eyes, variably blue, were only arresting because of their extraordinary
intensity of vision, their unquenchable and impertinent curiosity. A
girl absolutely different from all his cherished mental images; but, for
Howat Penny, always potent, always arousing a response from his
supercritical being, stirring his aesthetic heart. Everything he
possessed--his pictures, the albums, the moderate income, although she
had little need of that--had been willed to her. It would be hers then
just as it was, practically, now. And he was aware that her feeling
generously equalled his own.

His speculation, penetrating deeper than customary, rewarded him with
the thought that she was unusual in the courage of her emotions. That
was it--the courage of her emotions! There was a total lack of any
penurious trait, any ulterior thought of appraising herself against a
possible advantageous barter. She was never concerned with a conscious
prudery in the arrangement of her skirt. Mariana was aristocratic in the
correct sense of the term; a sense, he realized, now almost lost. And he
rated aristocracy of bearing higher than any other condition or fact.

He wondered a little at her patent pleasure in visiting him, an old man,
so frequently. Hardly a month passed but that, announced by telegram,
she did not appear and stay over night, or for a part of the week. She
would recount minutely the current gaiety of her polite existence. He
knew the names of her associates, a number of them had been exhibited to
him at Shadrach; the location of their country places; and what men
temporarily monopolized her interest. None of the latter had been
serious. He was, selfishly, glad of that; and waited uneasily through
her every visit until she assured him that her affections had not been
possessed. However, this condition, he knew, must soon come to an end;
Mariana was instinct with sex; and a short while before he had sent his
acknowledgment of her twenty-sixth birthday.

She sat occupied with salad against the cavernous depths of a fireplace
that, between the kitchen door and a built-in cupboard, filled the side
of the dining room. The long mantel above her head was ladened with the
grey sheen of pewter, and two uncommonly large, fluted bowls of blue
Stiegel glass. In the centre of the table linen, the Sheffield and
crystal and pictorial Staffordshire, was a vivid expanse of rose
geraniums. She broke off a flower and pinned it