"A black Penny, Jasper; resembled you. Personally, I like it better
now." Jasper Penny surveyed with approbation Stephen's full, handsome
presence. Jannan was a successful, a big, man. Well, so was he too. But
he thought with keen longing of the time when he was twenty-one, and
free, free to roam self-sufficient. He thought of that Howat Penny of
which they had spoken, black as he was black in the family tradition; he
had seen Hesselius's portrait of the other; and, but for the tied hair
and continental buff, it might have been a replica of himself. It was
curious--that dark strain of Welsh blood, cropping out undiminished,
concrete, after generations. The one to hold it before Howat had been
burned in Mary's time, in the sixteenth century, dead almost three
hundred years. Jasper had a sudden, vivid sense of familiarity with the
Howat who had married some widow or other. His mind returned to his own,
peculiar problem, to Essie Scofield, to the burden with which he had
encumbered himself, the payment that faced him for--for his sheer
youth. He said abruptly, belated:

"You fit the present formal ease of society, Stephen; you like it and it
likes you. In a superficial way I have done well enough, but
underneath--" his voice sank into silence. A profound, familiar
dejection seized him; incongruously he thought of Miss Brundon's
delicate shrinking from the mere contact of the amenities of speech.
Super-sensitive. "I must go," he announced, and refused Stephen Jannan's
invitation for the night.

"Stay for some supper, anyhow," the other insisted, and, a hand on his
arm, led him past the doors open upon the dancing.

Chandeliers, great coruscating pendants of glass prisms and candles,