"We can keep a photograph of Harriet on the table."

James Polder entered, and put a temporary end to his determined speech.
When the former saw Mariana his shameless pleasure, Howat thought, was
beyond credence. Positively neither of them paid any more attention to
him than they did to Rudolph. His irritation gave place to a deeper
realization that an impossible situation threatened. There was nothing,
obviously, that he could do to-day; but he would speak seriously to
Mariana to-morrow; one or both of them would have to leave Shadrach.
This determination took the present weight from his conscience; and,
pottering about small concerns of his own, he ignored them comfortably.

They appeared late, dirty and hot, for dinner; and it was eight o'clock
before Mariana came down in a gown like a white-petalled flower. She
wore no rings, but about her throat was a necklace of old-fashioned seed
pearls in loops and rosettes. "It's family," she told them; "it belonged
to Caroline Penny. And she married a Quaker, too; a David Forsythe." She
stopped suddenly, and Howat Penny recalled the tradition that Caroline
Penny, Gilbert's daughter, had appropriated her sister Myrtle's suitor.
Mariana favoured him with a fleet glance, the quiver of a reprehensible
wink. He glared back at her choking with suppressed wrath. "I have a
wonderful idea for to-morrow," she proceeded tranquilly; "we'll take
lunch, and leave Honduras, and go to Myrtle Forge for the day."

Her design was unfolded so rapidly, her directions to Rudolph so
explicit, that he had no opportunity to oppose his plan of sending her
away in the morning; and his impotence committed him to her suggestion.
She could go in the evening almost as well. After dinner he rattled the
dominoes significantly, but Mariana, smiling at him absently, went
through the room and out upon the porch. Polder, with an obscure
sentence, followed her. A soft rain sounded on the porch roof; but there
was no wind; the night was warm.

Howat glanced at his watch, after a period of restful ease, and saw that
it was past ten. He moved resolutely outside. Mariana was banked with
cushions in the canvas swing, and Polder sat with his body extended, his
hands clasped behind his head, in a gloomy revery. The night,
apparently, had robbed her countenance of any bloom; more than once in
the past year Howat had seen her stamped with the premonitory scarring
of time. Polder rose as he approached, and Mariana strug