He stood helpless, apparently, in an
attitude he found impossible to deny himself, waiting to be relieved of
his coverings, when Mariana whispered angrily, "Don't be so rotten,
Howat."
Finally the maid secured his cape, and he was conscious of a stir at the
head of the stairs. Immediately after, a shrill, subdued voice carried
to where he stood. "I told you," it said violently, "... dress suit."
There was an answering murmur, in which he could distinguish, James
Polder's impatient tones. The latter descended, and flooded the hall
with, light from a globe in the ceiling. He was garbed in blue serge and
flannels. "Isabella," he stated directly, belligerently even, "thinks we
ought to change our clothes; but we never do, and I wouldn't hear of--of
lying for effect." Howat Penny's dislike for him pleasantly increased.
Mariana, in rose crepe with a soft, dull gold girdle and long,
trumpet-like sleeves of flowered gauze, smiled at him warmly. "It is a
harmless pose of Howat's," she explained: "a concession to the ghosts of
the past." She patted the elder on the shoulder.
Above, James Polder ushered them into a room hung with crimson and gilt
stamped paper, an elaborately fretted cherry mantel about the asbestos
rectangle of an artificial hearth, and a multitude of chairs and divans
shrouded in linen.
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