ag.

The stillness, broken only by the querulous melody of a robin, and a
beginning, faint piping of frogs, was amazingly profound after the
roaring energy of the Medial Works. The decay of Shadrach Furnace showed
absolute against the crashing miles of industry on the broad river. A
breath of honeysuckle lifted to Howat Penny; the sky was primrose.
Mariana moved closer to him and took his arm. They said nothing.

A warm light was spilling across the darkening grass from the lower
windows of his dwelling, blurring in a dusk under the high leafage of
aged maples. The white roses were already in bud on the vine climbing
the lattices at his door, and Mariana fixed one in his buttonhole.
"Howat," she said, "it isn't as if you were doing it just for Jim, but
for a man, any man, really sick. I'll not even ask you to think of it
for me. He can sit on the porch and converse with your owls, and poke
about over the hills."

Howat considered the advisability of attempting to extract a promise
from her that she would stay away from Shadrach if James Polder was
there. He considered it--very momentarily. The possibility, he asserted
to himself, was without any alleviating circumstance. What, in heaven's
name, would Charlotte think if, as it well might, the knowledge came to
her that Mariana and a Polder--that name she never repeated--a married
Polder without his wife, were poking over the hills together at
Shadrach? She would have him, Howat, examined for lunacy. Mariana
demanded too much. He told her this with the dessert.

"It's only the commonest charity," she repeated. Her attack rapidly
veered. "Howat," she asked, "do you really dislike Jimmy?" Certainly, he
asserted, he--he disapproved of him ... altogether. A headstrong young
donkey who had made a shocking mess of his life. He would have to make
the best of a bad affair for which no one was to blame but himself. "It
is terrific," she agreed, almost cheerfully; and he had a vague sense of
having, somehow, delivered himself into her hands. "Perhaps something
can still be done," she said, frowning, increasing the dangers of his
position. He managed, by a stubborn silence, to check further
conversation in that direction; hoping, vainly, that James Polder
couldn't come, that Harriet, sensibly, would insist on his accompanying
her, or that Byron would solemnly intervene.

Mariana, later displaying a letter, dispelled his wishes. "It's been
arranged quite easily," she told him. "