"Do you mind?" she turned before him; and, with an impatience
half assumed and half actual, he fastened the last hooks of her dress.
"As you know," he reminded her, "I don't attempt cocktails. Will you
have a gin and bitters?"
She wouldn't, frankly; and they embarked on dinner in a pleasant,
unstrained silence. Mariana was, he realized, the only person alive for
whom he had a genuine warmth of affection. She was a first cousin; her
Aunt Elizabeth had married James Penny, his father; but his fondness for
her had no root in that fact. It didn't, for example, extend to her
brother Kingsfrere. He speculated again on the reason for her marked
effect. Mariana was not lovely, as had been the charmers of his own day;
her features, with the exception of her eyes, were unremarkable. And her
eyes, variably blue, were only arresting because of their extraordinary
intensity of vision, their unquenchable and impertinent curiosity. A
girl absolutely different from all his cherished mental images; but, for
Howat Penny, always potent, always arousing a response from his
supercritical being, stirring his aesthetic heart. Everything he
possessed--his pictures, the albums, the moderate income, although she
had little need of that--had been willed to her.
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