red the single
glass in his eye and looked deliberately around. Isabella watched him
with a tense interest. Mrs. Polder gave a short, perturbed giggle. "Just
like George Arliss," she told her son. James Polder, on the edge of a
chair, was twitching with repressed uneasiness; he frowned
antagonistically and then gazed appealingly at Mariana. "I have been
introduced to your cousin, Miss Provost," Isabella again took up her
social thread. "A dear friend of mine, a talented actress, gave a
recitation at Miss Provost's request, for suffrage."

"Eliza's splendid," Mariana pronounced.

"Peter Jannan Provost's daughter," Byron Polder added fully. But his
voice indicated that even more, darkly unfavourable, might be revealed.
"Miss Provost has been under arrest." Damn the solemn ass, Howat Penny
thought. "She's been in the jug twice now," Mariana went on cheerfully;
"Kingsfrere had to put up a bond the last time." Mrs. Polder was rapidly
regaining her ease. "Wasn't her mamma scared?" she inquired. "I'd go on
if Isabella was taken up."

"Imagine Isabella!" Jim Polder exploded. "It's quite the thing," that
individual asserted. "Isabella," her mother declared, "it is twenty-five
past seven. I wish you'd go out and see where dinner is." She rose with
an expression of mingled surprise and pain. "Really, mother," she said,
"that is an extraordinary request." Her brother snorted. There was a
sudden muffled clamour of chimes from below, and Mrs. Polder gave a sigh
of relief. "I didn't want it spoiled," she explained, descending; "Jim
would be wild after all his eagerness to have things nice."

The dining room, resembling all the interior, was long and narrow, and
had a high ceiling in varnished light wood. Byron Polder faced his wife
at the opposite end of the table. Howat Penny sat beside Mariana, with
Jim Polder across; Isabella was on her mother's right; and a waiting
place was filled by a dark, surprisingly beautiful girl. "This is Kate,"
Mrs. Polder said proudly. Howat thought he had not seen such a handsome
female for years. She wore a ruffled, transparent crepe de Chine waist
that clung in frank curves to full, graceful shoulders; her hair was a
lustrous, black coil, and she had sultry, topaz eyes and a mouth
drooping like her father's, but more warmly bowed. Kate Polder met the
direct pleasure of his inspection with a privately conveyed admission
that she understood and subscribed to it. Here, at last, was a girl up
to the s