man's mother
was Delia Mullen, a daughter of the dirty ward leader. All this aside
from--from his bad blood."

"It's partly yours, you know," she said quietly. "After all, there are
other places I can see him." She turned away. "Eliza Provost is insane,"
he muttered. "No," Mariana returned, "only superior to narrow little
prejudices. She can see life, people, as they are. Jim Polder is one of
the most promising men in the steel mills. He is going up and up. That
is enough for Eliza, it is enough for me; and if it won't do for my
family--" she made an opening gesture with her fingers. Her expression
had hardened; she gazed at him with bright, contemptuous eyes. In a
moment the affectionate bonds between them seemed to have dissolved.
His feeling was one of mingled anger and concern; but he endeavoured to
regain his self-control, conscious that a hasty word more might do
irreparable harm.

"Of course, I can't have you meeting him about the streets," he stated.
"It is better here, if necessary. I am very much displeased," a note of
complaint appeared, and she immediately returned to him, laid a hand on
his shoulder. "Nothing is certain," she assured him. "I wanted to be
sure, that is all. I don't want to make a mess out of things."

It was a part of the very quality of emotional courage he had so lately
defined, extolled; a part of her disdain for ordinary prudence and
conventional approbation. A direct dislike for this James Polder invaded
him, a determined attitude of hyper-criticism. When the younger man
reappeared Howat Penny found justification for this attitude. The
details of Polder's apparel, although acceptable in the main, were
without nicety. His shoes were a crude tan, and his necktie from the
outer limbo. His hands, too, had a grimy surface and the nails were
broken, unkempt.

But it was evident that all the criticism was not to be limited to his
own. James Polder regarded the single glass with a scoffing lip, as if
it were the appendage of a ludicrous Anglomania. He glanced with
indifference at Howat Penny's pictures, books, the collected emblems of
his cultivated years. His brows raised at the photograph of Scalchi in
the Page's trunks--as if, the elder thought, she had been a "pony" in
the _Black Crook_--and was visibly amused at the great Mapleson, posed
in a dignified attitude by a broken column. An irrepressible and biting
scorn, Howat Penny saw, was, perhaps, the young man's strongest
attribute. H