Howat Penny saw that while she was actually no prettier than Caroline she was infinitely more vivid and compelling.  Her face held an extraordinary potency; her bare arms and shoulders were more insistent than his sister’s; there was about her a consciousness of the allurement of body, frankness in its employment.  She made no effort to mask her feeling, which at present was one of complete indifference to her surroundings; and, not talking, a shadow had settled on her vision.  Caroline was seated on a little sofa across from the fireplace, and she moved her voluminous skirt aside, made a place for him.

“Almost nothing of Annapolis,” Mrs. Winscombe replied to a query of what she had seen in Maryland.  “We were there hardly two weeks, and I hadn’t recovered from the trip across the sea.  When I think of returning God knows I’d almost stay here.  You wouldn’t suppose one person could vent so much.  I believe Felix went to a Jockey Club, there were balls and farces; but I kept in bed.”  Mrs. Penny asked, “And London—­how are you amused there now?” The other retied the bow of a garter.  “Fireworks, Roman candles to Mr. Handel’s music, and Italian parties, Villeggiatura.  Covent Garden with paper lanterns among the trees, seductions—­”

Gilbert Penny smote his hands on the chair arms.  “This hectoring of our commerce will have to rest somewhere!” he declared; “taking the duty from pig iron, and then restricting its market to London, is no conspicuous improvement.  It is those enactments that provide our currency with Spanish pieces instead of English pounds.  The West Indies are too convenient to be overlooked.”  Mr. Winscombe replied stiffly, “The Government is prepared to meet infractions of its law.”  Mr. Penny muttered a period about Germany in England, with a more distant echo of Hanoverian whores and deformed firebrands.  His guest sat with a harsh, implacable countenance framed in the long shadows of his elaborate wig, his ornate coat tails falling stiffly on either side of his chair.

Howat, bred in the comparative simplicity of the Province, found the foppery of the aging man slightly ridiculous; yet he was aware that Mr. Winscombe’s essential character had no expression in his satin and powder; his will was as rugged and virile as that of any adventuring frontiersman clad in untanned hides.  He was, Howat decided, at little disadvantage with his young wife.  He wondered if any deep bond bound the two.  Their personal feelings were carefully concealed, and in this they resembled Isabel Howat, rather than Gilbert, her husband.  The latter had a habit of expressing publicly his affectionate domestic relations.  And Howat Penny decided that he vastly preferred the others’ reserve.