The day was grey and definitely cold; a small cannon stove glowed in the
counting house; but Ludowika kept mostly to her room. She sent him a
note by the Italian, and Howat eyed the fellow bowing in the doorway. A
flexibility that seemed entirely without bones. His eyes were jet slits,
his lips shaven and mobile; a wig was repulsively saturated with scented
grease. Yet it was not in actual details that he oppressed Howat; but by
the vague suggestion of debasing commendations, of surreptitious
understanding, insinuations. He seemed, absurdly, unreal, a symbol the
intent of which Howat missed; he suppressed an insane movement to touch
the Italian, discover if he was actually before him.

He reread Ludowika's note whenever he was not actually employed in
recording, until he was obliged to conceal it in the Forge book.

Later Abner Forsythe arrived with David, and there was a stir of
preparing rooms and communication with the farm. David's mother was
dead, and Abner conducted the wedding negotiations with the Pennys. "I
thought it would be the pretty little one," he said at the table, with a
Quaker disregard of small niceties of feeling; "but, Gilbert, any girl
of yours would be more than the young men of the present deserve." It
was a difficult conversation for every one but Ludowika and Abner
Forsythe. A greater ease appeared after supper. David and Caroline
disappeared in the direction of the clavichord, from which sounded some
scattered, perfunctory measures. The two elder men returned, over a
decanter of French spirits, to the inevitable and engrossing subject of
iron and the Crown regulations; Myrtle sat stiffly before the fireplace
with Isabel Penny; and Howat moved up and across the room, his gaze
lying on Ludowika, spread in an expanse of orange chiffon and bold
silver tracery on the small sofa.