in a
noticeably disturbed tone. But, of course, he had made a mistake. James
Polder's intensity increased, concentrated in a gaze at once belligerent
and eager. He said:

"Then Miss Jannan didn't tell you. It was a mistake. It may be I am not
exactly desirable here," his voice sharpened, and he retreated a step
toward the door.

"No," Howat Penny replied; "she didn't." He found himself studying a
face at once youthful and lined, a good jaw contradicted by a mouth
already traced with discontent, and yellow-brown eyes kindling with a
surprising energy of resentment. "You are Byron Polder's son?" he said
in a manner that carried its own affirmation. "Eunice Scofield's
grandson."

"Eunice Penny's," the other interjected. "Your own grandfather saw to
that." His hand rested in the doorway, and he stopped Honduras, carrying
in the guests' bags. Howat Penny's poise rapidly returned. "Go right up,
Honduras," he directed; "the Windmill room, I think. I had never seen
you," he said to James Polder, as if in apology. "But your father has
been pointed out to me." He waved the younger man into the room beyond,
and moved forward the cigarettes.

James Polder took one with an evident relief in the commonplace act. He
struck a match and lit the cigarette with elaborate care. "Will you sit
for a little?" the elder proceeded. "Or perhaps you'd rather change at
once. I've no doubt it was sticky in the city."

"Thank you; perhaps I'd better--the last." Rudolph appeared, and
conducted the young man above. Howat Penny sat suddenly, his lips folded
in a stubborn line. Mariana had behaved outrageously; she must be
familiar with the whole, miserable, past episode; she had given him some
very bad moments. He had a personal bitterness toward that old, unhappy
affair, the dereliction of his dead grandfather--it had been, he had
always felt, largely responsible for his own course in life; it had,
before his birth even, formed his limitations, as it had those of his
father.

The latter had been the child of a dangerously late marriage, a marriage
from which time and delay had stripped both material potency and
sustaining illusion. Jasper Penny had been nearing fifty when his son
was born; and that act of deliberate sacrifice on the part of his wife,
entering middle age, had imposed an inordinate amount of suffering on
her last years. Their child, it was true, had been of normal stature,
and lived to within a short space of a half century. But