a part of a super-cultivation, a world of such niceties as the flawless
courtesy of Mr. Winscombe discussing with her the unhappy passion of the
Princess Caroline for Lord Hervey.

Howat Penny thought sombrely of love, of the emotion that had
brought--or betrayed?--Isabel Howat so far away from her birthright. It
had gripped his sister no less tyrannically; stripping them, he
considered, of their essential liberty. The thing was clear enough in
his mind--nothing more than an animal instinct, humiliating to the human
individual, to breed. It was the mere repetition of nature through the
working of an automatic law. No such obscure fate, he determined, should
overtake, obliterate, him. Yet it had involved his mother, a person of
the first superiority. A slight chill, as if a breath of imminent winter
had touched him, communicated itself to his heart.

A trivial conversation was in progress across the table between Mrs.
Winscombe and Myrtle. The latter was an embodiment of the familiar Saxon
type of beauty; her hair was fair, infinitely pale gold, her complexion
a delicately mingled crimson and white, her eyes as candidly blue as
flowers. Her features were finely moulded, and her shoulders, slipping
out from azure lutestring, were like smooth handfuls of meringue. Her
voice was always formal, and it sounded stilted, forced, in comparison
with Mrs. Winscombe's easy periods.

The supper ended, and the company trailed into a drawing room at the
opposite end of the house from the kitchen wing. Howat delayed, and
Caroline, urged forward by Mr. Winscombe's sardonically ubiquitous bow,
half lingered to cast back a glance of private understanding at her
brother. When he decided reluctantly to follow he was kept back by the
sound of a familiar explanation in his father's decisive, full tones.